High-Impact Teaching Strategies (Hattie's Research)

High-Impact Teaching Strategies

Based on John Hattie's meta-analysis research, these strategies have the highest effect sizes for student learning:

1. Collective Teacher Efficacy (d=1.57)

• Teachers believing together they can make a difference
• Collaborative planning and problem-solving
• Shared responsibility for student outcomes
• Professional learning communities (PLCs)

2. Self-Reported Grades (d=1.33)

• Students accurately predicting their performance
• Teaching students to self-assess
• Building metacognitive awareness
• Setting realistic learning goals

3. Teacher Clarity (d=0.75)

• Clear learning intentions communicated to students
• Success criteria explicitly shared
• Students know what they're learning and why
• "I can..." statements and learning targets

4. Feedback (d=0.70)

• Specific, timely, actionable feedback
• Focus on the task, not the person
• Feed-forward: what to do next
• Opportunities to use feedback

5. Metacognitive Strategies (d=0.60)

• Teaching students to think about their thinking
• Self-questioning techniques
• Planning, monitoring, evaluating learning
• Think-alouds by teachers and students

6. Direct Instruction (d=0.60)

• Explicit teaching with clear explanations
• Modeling with think-alouds
• Guided practice with scaffolding
• Independent practice with feedback

7. Spaced Practice (d=0.60)

• Distributing practice over time vs. massing
• Interleaving different topics
• Regular review and retrieval practice
• Spiral curriculum approach

What Doesn't Work Well

• Retention/holding students back (d=−0.32)
• Ability grouping for all subjects (d=0.12)
• Homework in elementary (d=0.15)
• Class size reduction alone (d=0.21)