Narrator: This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles do a book review of Great Learners by Design Principles and Practices to Supercharge Learners. It's written by John Hattie, Timothy O'Leary, Kyle Hattie, and Gregory Donahue.
Thanks for joining us.
Jared: Rob, it's book review time. It is. We do these every now and then. The last one that we did was teach like a human from our good friend Dave Mulder over there at DORT in the middle of Iowa, in the middle of a cornfield just like us. Now we are moving on to a book titled Great Learners by Design, and one of the authors is John Hattie.
Rob: Who we had on the show.
Jared: Who, unfortunately, I was sick and you had on the show. And I listened to that interview and it was really, really good. So I'm really upset I missed that one. What the
Rob: heck was on feedback.
Jared: Yes. It was during our motivation series. So you found this book, great learners by design principles and practices to supercharge learners, and we're gonna talk about
Rob: it today. I'm looking forward to this conversation. It was an interesting read. I think there were a lot of things that we both said, hey. You know, this is very familiar.
I think the difference is they maybe just put it in a different perspective, which I think could be helpful to our listeners. So but I think we just drill down on probably what was the biggest takeaways at least both of us.
Jared: Yeah. Sure.
Rob: And those were the 12 strategies.
Jared: Mhmm. Disclosure, this is a textbook I which I didn't realize when we got it, and I was like, cool.
Rob: But it's built in the
Jared: same my education days.
Rob: To be fair, it is built it's built in the in the manner to which they, you know, teach in the book.
Jared: Totally.
Rob: So the first couple of chapters give you just the skeletons of what leads up to it.
Jared: Yeah. They built the foundation. They go through and talk about Bogotsky and
Rob: Yeah. The different learning theories
Jared: Yeah.
Rob: And basically, also talk about blooms. Mhmm. And they have a particular position. We'll let our readers just read the book for themselves. It's not a very heavy book.
I mean, it's heavy in the sense of technical language. So if you're an educator, you'll understand it thoroughly. It's not like a read that just anyone who hasn't been trained would have an easy time of reading. I think that's fair to say.
Jared: I would totally agree with that. Yeah.
Rob: So if you're a trained educator, there's definitely things here to glean. Also, would say, found a lot of consistency with uncommon sense teaching.
Jared: So there was review that we did.
Rob: Right. Mhmm. So there was there was a lot of reflection or a lot of the concepts in uncommon sense teaching do get reflected here. I think probably the difference to be fair to the authors here, to doctor Hattie, would be they have a particular way that they come through the material and that surfaces around basically not a hierarchy of strategies, although they kinda turn it into one.
Jared: There is an intended order Yeah. That they establish without it being a hierarchy. So take that with it as you will.
Rob: But there there are basically three sections. Right?
Jared: Mhmm.
Rob: That that they say you need to move through in terms of being a teacher or for effective learning. And that's the surface acquiring, then surface consolidating, and then finally, deep transfer. Mhmm. And they've got some other mnemonics that they use that help you just, one, remember those. So I remember that triad by SCD.
Right. So in doing this, I it's what I made up for myself. But the big ones are surface learning is one of their sections, if you will, bigger sections. They use that term knowing that.
Jared: If you think back to Bloom's, if I could, it's basically the recall and the understand and identify. Right. Define.
Rob: And they're gonna call these the building blocks. And it really has to do with level content recall. They think, you know, one of the caveats that they had was they felt like research and teaching are often over concerned with these strategies and treat them as an end of learning rather than the start.
Jared: Right. And I agree with that too.
Rob: Yeah. And I think that's a fair Yeah. A fair statement, a fair assessment.
Jared: I would say that's also unintentional from for most educators too is that they think they're pushing deeper level stuff, but, in reality, all they're really doing is just doing Surface. Surface level stuff.
Rob: Yeah. And it's a frustration of many teachers. Yep. Right? Especially in the k 12 in our public schools.
Yep. Right? Like, they go through it every semester. Teachers have to deal with standardized testing on the state and national level, and it takes up a good bit of their time. So if they have a scope and sequence that they're trying to get through in a semester Mhmm.
Because they are a standard testing subject Mhmm. Then that's a lot of pressure. Oh, yeah. Because it is, I would say, it is mostly surface learning that they're testing. They're not just straightly recall.
Not necessarily the knowing how or the knowing with that Yeah. Hattie and and the other authors bring forward.
Jared: Right. And the reason they that schools will test that is because that's the easiest way to return scores to the schools is if I can throw this into a computer and it grades for me, it's a lot quicker than having someone at the sit down. Right. And, you know, that's why they're the essay portions of those. I could go into detail about, how they grade the essay portion of that of those tests.
But in reality, it's just that they assess surface level because it's the quickest way. But then, like you said, these standardized tests are usually in the spring. So you can have students reach those next levels of, learning, the deeper stuff, the connecting, but then they have to go back and recall what they did previously in the year if you wanna do the stuff that's on the standardized test. So some teachers feel like, do I go forward if I need to? If this determines our school's, you know, accreditation or our score or how we get federal funds or state funds, then I'm sticking to this and, you know, it could be also pressure from the administration.
Right. All that stuff is in there.
Rob: Well, the second part in terms of deep learning really has to do with taking those surface level concepts and those building blocks and then digging into them at a deeper level, finding more meaning, relating them to one another, extending the ideas, looking for patterns, underlying principles. You know, you get into evaluation of evidence in this. Like, I can see some of these strategies, which we're gonna talk about here in just a moment, being very helpful. But then they move into the knowing with. So you have knowing that building blocks, knowing how, taking those building blocks, going deeper with them, developing them, developing the ideas conceptually, and being able to make connect connections, clarification, and and being able to verbalize it as well.
That's one of the big ones they say is you need to be able to self verbalize these concepts. And then for them, it ends in transfer. Mhmm. So what they mean by transfer is it's their ability or capacity of a student to be able to take knowledge skills or strategies and that they have acquired in one of the other contexts, knowing how or knowing that, and transfer them to another area and be able to make informed, you know, insights to another area that they didn't really study. And they you know, the the authors really say this is the goal.
Mhmm. This is truly the goal of learning is is basically Stern's ACT, you know, model, which is acquire, connect, transfer.
Jared: Yeah. That's the biggest one for me that connects with, uncommon sense teaching. I think that's the you know, we they talked about that where you you bat around these ideas in the short term and then you start trying to make connections and the synapses in your brains to information that's already there. So making those making things stick. Right.
So that's where that transfer really comes in here in this aspect and how it fits with Uncommon Sense Teaching and Doctor. Oakley's book because it's that idea that, okay, once I've learned this, where can I organize it? Where can I store it in my long term? Where does it fit? Where what connections can I make to make these connections and make it stick better?
Rob: And can you apply it to other things? So one example, I think, for us personally and for you personally, is when you started understanding coding
Jared: Yeah. Mhmm.
Rob: By having ChatGPT give you an analogy through, your understanding of video games.
Jared: Yeah. I have a I have a game mode with, ChatGPT, and this actually came from a seminar that I attended. Someone mentioned is on is it a it was a seminar on, ways of using chat GPT or LLM in teaching. And someone said, well, have them make a connection between what their interests are to make that to put it in those kind of terms. So I have a game mode where I ask it to I put in the system instruction, explain this and, using terminology of video games, preferably Nintendo, Super Nintendo, if you can make those connections, do that.
And when I say, if I don't understand something in our conversations and I say, press start, you go into game mode and tell me what you just did, but it put it into terminology that helps me connect it. And when I grasp the concept, I say game over, and it goes back into normal.
Rob: Oh, that's cool.
Jared: Yeah. I I I see that connection there like you're saying.
Rob: So if we take that surface deep transfer, they came up with 12 strategies that they really focus in on. They say these are the there are others, but they say these have the largest effect size. So why don't we go through those? The largest number that they deal with are eight in the surface area. So that's knowing that or acquiring or knowing that and consolidating.
So there are eight there. Yep. Why don't you go through some of those?
Jared: Yeah. So, I mean, some of them, organizing and outlining, that's a good way of, like, just storing information as it comes in. Where does it fit? How does it fit together? They have two on practice, one of them being deliberate practice and one practice testing.
Rob: Mhmm.
Jared: So, again, putting into motion the stuff that students are doing. Deliberate practice, meaning like specific to the new new set of information that they're
Rob: More skills.
Jared: Yeah. Skills, whatever it is. Rehearsal is one of them as well. Giving and receiving feedback, that's the one that I had a bit of an issue with, to be straight up honest with you. I won't go on too far of a tangent, but it's basically peer editing.
And I have a I don't know. Peer editing sticks in my crawl a bit. I don't know if we have time for it in this episode, but
Rob: Well, it is only a point six five effect size with the studies that
Jared: they have. But it's still point six five. They still mentioned.
Rob: It's not the highest.
Jared: The one that I thought was interesting, and there's also distributed practice, one that was interesting is mnemonics
Rob: Mhmm.
Jared: Which I didn't even like mnemonics to me still and with you know, it's also an uncommon sense teaching. It still feels very childish to me, this idea of it being like Yeah. Doing a b c d e f g. It just One feels bun, two shoe. One bun, two shoe.
Yeah. I don't ever heard that before.
Rob: Oh, really?
Jared: No. What is that?
Rob: It's kind of a visual mnemonic. You can memorize things by association. Mnemonics are a way of of doing that association. If you have something that you already know and you can make it outlandish Yeah. You can make it stick.
Jared: I remember you when I so I heard you speak at a church and you had us do the thing with our feet and the big toe. Uh-huh. I I remember that. I remember it vaguely. It didn't but for a while there, it really stuck.
But then I
Rob: Yeah. You have Yeah. To rehearse So the rehearsal so it it makes sense. Like, if you take mnemonics number eight, which is a point eight effect size according to their their research, and then you have rehearsal. I don't know if you looked at that effect size.
It's point nine six. If you're teaching somebody something and you can turn it into a song. Right. Right? Mhmm.
That is a form of I would argue as a form of mnemonics, especially if it rhymes. Right?
Jared: Mhmm. Yep.
Rob: Little Bo Peep
Jared: Awesome and sheep. Doesn't know where to find him. Right.
Rob: And I think most people who are listening to this after they heard me say, little Bo Peep, their mind went ahead and filled in the rest. Mhmm. You do that with songs all the time, especially songs that you know, or at least I do. And I think people people have that as well. So you have this effect size of mnemonics and rehearsal.
So that's what I just did. I took a poem and I rehearsed it.
Jared: Mhmm.
Rob: The more you do that, the more it pushes, like we learned from Uncommon Sense Teaching, down into the brain, it starts deeply linking into the brain. So from the brain perspective, that's what's going on. And then we're looking here, the more you own it, that can move us over into the deep area of knowing how. So the knowing how acquiring and then the knowing how consolidating where we take those things that we've been rehearsing with mnemonics and then we start asking deeper questions. Right?
That would be like, who is little Bo Peep? Where did little Bo Peep come from?
Jared: Why does she keep losing her sheep?
Rob: Well, why does she have sheep in the first place? Uh-huh. I mean, has anybody ever wondered why little Bo Peep has sheep?
Jared: Probably some stand up comedian somewhere in Illinois probably.
Rob: And that's why they make a lot of money.
Jared: Well, I don't
Rob: because they think about Little Bo Peep.
Jared: Haven't heard of them. So apparently, they're not very good. Nate Bargazi is not doing that in his stand up You
Rob: know, related relating ideas, like, where did she learn how to keep sheep?
Jared: Why can't she find them? Yeah. You know? Was she new to the community? Is this a new pasture?
So that's connections there.
Rob: Yeah. That's deep. So relating ideas, you're trying to relate to other things you know, and you're seeking clarity. The effect size there in terms of what they would say leading to learning or leading to deeper learning is point eight eight and then point eight two.
Jared: Right.
Rob: So once you get those, then you should be able to move over into the transfer. And so that's one of things they talk about. You can't skip over. So you can't move to deep if you don't know the surface.
Jared: It's like learning how to swim.
Rob: Right. You don't Some
Jared: people do throw their kids in the deep end and They learn. Survive. That's probably not the most ideal way of
Rob: teaching someone. Learn the actual basics of, like, really good swimming, and it's more just not drowning.
Jared: Yeah. Right.
Rob: Right? There's a difference between swimming and not drowning.
Jared: Right.
Rob: So if we move into the last part, which was transfer, that's where you get into those ideas of, someone being able to essentially teach.
Jared: Mhmm.
Rob: Right? Self verbalization and then also finding similarities and differences.
Jared: Yeah.
Rob: So little Bo Peep is different than
Jared: Little Miss Muffet who sat on a tuffet eating some curds and white.
Rob: What's the difference? Well, one of them is sitting on a tuffet, the other one's looking for sheep.
Jared: Well, not doing it well.
Rob: Right. Obviously, because she lost them.
Jared: Yeah.
Rob: So maybe they're both delinquents. Who knows?
Jared: Miss Muffet is afraid of spiders as well. So who knows if, is is is little Bo Peep afraid of spiders? We don't know. It's not in the story. But
Rob: But that would be like comparing and contrasting.
Jared: It would be. Yeah. Right?
Rob: Yeah. Right. Self verbalization.
Jared: Retelling it.
Rob: Retelling.
Jared: I'm surprised that so if you're going by the effectiveness level of it, point five three for self verbalization, I feel like that would have been I guess I assume that would have been a lot higher because it is the process of reteaching basically. It's the idea that, okay, you know it, can you verbalize it to someone else? Mhmm. I would have feel like that would have been a lot higher because there's so many things that have to go into that. Although I say that as I in my own head, I think it back to my own teaching of literally reading something ten minutes before the students came in the room and acted like I knew it.
So maybe it's not as effective as we think it is. I'm not sure.
Rob: But Well, what's interesting here too is like, I'm looking at the effect size of finding similarities and differences.
Jared: Yes. Off the chart.
Rob: Yeah. 1.23.
Jared: Yeah.
Rob: So up to this point, the largest effect size that we've seen was back in surface Mhmm. In rehearsal and mnemonics. Point eight for mnemonics and then point nine six for rehearsal. So those are two strategies and they, you know, they talk about like, if you read their book, you'll see different times when you you should be using these strategies so they get into more detail. We're not doing that.
We don't have the time. Trying to just do a quick overview of I think what we believe are the more salient points you're gonna get. You're gonna get a lot more information if you choose to to read the book. But this finding similarities and differences just kinda shocked me in terms of effect size.
Jared: Yeah. Mhmm. I wonder how that looks as far as, assessing. Like, you know, with if I'm going back to I'm comparing and contrasting with Bloom's. Right?
Bloom's, the top level is like evaluation, creating, all that stuff. Evaluation, I guess, would be like compare and contrast, but I wonder what the ceiling like, what's the summative assessment for someone going through this this model? What does that look like? Is it just at the compare and contrast, or is it is there something more than that? I'm wondering.
Rob: Well, I think your summary is probably gonna be you can you can do testing probably on any one of those areas. Right?
Jared: Oh, okay.
Rob: We we could assess any of those things to try to find out where they're at and they they do have they do have ways of trying to assess that. Effect size is just a number that's used to indicate how much of whatever this variable is is not because of chance. In other words, how much of this variable is actually used or being influencing the outcome Right. If that makes sense. Right.
And so when you see something like point nine six, that means you can't attribute the outcome of rehearsal to just random chance. Right. And then finding similarities and differences, most certainly. Because if you don't know the things and you can't relate the concepts, there's no way you're gonna be able to compare and contrast and be able to show that to others.
Jared: So the book also goes through some different strategies and gives some tips and pointers on how to do those and gives examples and tables. So it's a it's a really good resource. I would recommend it. Just a different avenue of exploring, the hierarchy or nonhierarchy of learning and steps to go through to help students attain knowledge and retain it and, stick with it. So I I would I would recommend picking it up myself.
Would you?
Rob: Yeah. It's definitely a worthwhile read. I think, you know, we obviously we need to go back and, look at it again because there's just a lot there. It's it's a it's a short book, but it's it's dense. Yeah.
There's a lot.
Jared: And A lot to return to. Good resource.
Rob: Yeah. And it's one of those things that you're gonna keep going back to, if you're willing to spend the time. And so I would say, you know, if it's for yourself personally and your own learning or you're designing something or you're a teacher, this is probably a decent book to have on the shelf.
Jared: Oh, yeah. For sure. The book is Great Learners by Principles and Practices of Supercharged Learners by John Hattie, Timothy O'Leary, Kyle Hattie, and Gregory Donahue.
Ryan: Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about our episode today, please feel free to reach out to us at ctlpodcast@cedarville.edu. We'd also love to connect with you on LinkedIn. Finally, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.