Visible Learning
The largest synthesis of education research ever conducted — and what it tells us about what actually moves student achievement at GES.
The greatest source of variance in student achievement is the teacher. The question is not whether the teacher makes a difference — it's what kind of difference.— John Hattie, Visible Learning (2009)
John Hattie's Visible Learning is a synthesis of over 1,800 meta-analyses covering more than 300 million students across the globe — the most comprehensive dataset on what works in education ever assembled. The core question: among all the things schools and teachers do, which ones actually have a significant impact on student learning?
The answer, distilled: teacher mindframes and deliberate instructional practices matter more than anything else. Curriculum, technology, class size, and policy are all secondary to what happens between a teacher and a learner in the moment of instruction.
d < 0.20 — Negligible effect. Don't prioritize.
d = 0.20–0.40 — Small effect. Below the hinge point — student growth would happen anyway.
d = 0.40 — The hinge point. Average of all 1,800+ meta-analyses.
d = 0.40–0.60 — Medium effect. Worth doing deliberately.
d > 0.60 — Large effect. These are the strategies to build your practice around.
d > 1.0 — Very large effect. Transformative when implemented with fidelity.
Teachers with Mind Frame #1 ask "What is my evidence that these students are learning?" after every lesson — not "Did I cover the content?"
This shift from delivery-thinking to impact-thinking is the foundation of explicit teaching. You can use all the right techniques and still not be an explicit teacher if you're not monitoring, adjusting, and evaluating your effect.
What Is Explicit Teaching?
Explicit teaching is among the highest-effect instructional approaches in Hattie's research — but it is widely misunderstood. It is not lecturing. It is not teacher-dominated. It is structured, transparent, and student-centred instruction.
Explicit teaching does not mean telling students everything. It means making the learning visible — to the student and to the teacher.— Hattie & Donoghue, Learning Strategies: A Synthesis and Conceptual Model (2016)
| Feature | Explicit Teaching (what Hattie means) | Didactic Teaching (the misconception) |
|---|---|---|
| Who has the learning target? | Student AND teacher — shared, visible, understood | Teacher only — students guess what they're supposed to learn |
| What does the teacher do? | Models thinking, demonstrates strategies, provides corrective feedback | Transmits information; student is passive recipient |
| How is success defined? | Clear success criteria known to students before the task | Success defined by task completion, not learning evidence |
| What happens when students struggle? | Teacher responds with more explicit instruction, not more practice | Student told to try again with the same approach |
| Role of student voice? | Central — dialogue, questioning, checking understanding | Minimal — answer checking, not sense-making |
| Effect size (Hattie) | d = 0.60 (Explicit teaching) · d = 1.17 (Teacher clarity) | d = 0.22 (Passive learning) · much below hinge |
Hattie identifies eight phases that distinguish effective explicit teaching from mere delivery. These are not steps in a rigid sequence — they are conditions to create within a lesson. A single lesson may cycle through several of them more than once.
Knowledge Strand: "Today I'll understand why the Nile River mattered to Ancient Egypt." Success criteria: "I can give two reasons using details from the text."
Key teacher moves: Think-pair-share about what students already know · Vocabulary pre-assessment (Knowledge Rating Scale) · Brief discussion: "What does this remind you of?" · Activating through questions, not just statements
Think-aloud formula:
"I'm going to read this word. I see the letters ow. I know that pattern says /ow/. So this word says... 'glow.' Let me check — does that make sense? Yes."
Effective prompting during We Do:
"Try this one — what do you notice first?" · "You got that part — now what comes next?" · "That's close — look at the second syllable again." · "Tell me your thinking before you write."
When to return to I Do:
If more than 30% of students are making the same error during We Do, stop and re-model. This is not failure — it is teaching. Re-teaching in response to data is exactly what Hattie's research validates.
The Learning Cycle
Hattie and Donoghue's three-phase model of how learning develops — and how explicit teaching should look different at each phase.
The most common mistake in explicit teaching is treating all learning as the same. Hattie's research distinguishes three phases of learning — surface, deep, and transfer — each requiring different instructional approaches. Teaching surface-level content with deep-learning strategies (discovery, inquiry, debate) is a mismatch that reduces effectiveness. So is using surface-level drills when students need transfer practice.
Spaced Practice (d=0.65)
Vocabulary Instruction (d=0.67)
Worked Examples (d=0.57)
Prior Knowledge Activation (d=0.93)
Elaborative Interrogation (d=0.48)
Concept Mapping (d=0.60)
Summarization (d=0.50)
Reciprocal Teaching (d=0.74)
Metacognitive Strategies (d=0.69)
Self-Regulation (d=0.52)
Creativity / Analogy (d=0.65)
Teaching Others (d=0.55)
Teachers often use deep learning strategies (Socratic discussion, open-ended inquiry, creative tasks) when students are still at the surface phase — they don't yet have the foundational knowledge to engage meaningfully. The result: louder, busier classrooms with lower achievement gains.
Equally damaging: keeping students in surface-level drill when they're ready for deep or transfer — robbing them of the connections that make learning stick.
The fix: Use formative data to identify which phase each student group is in. Station A (teacher-led) should target the phase of the students in that group — not the phase the teacher is most comfortable teaching.
Effect Size Toolkit
The top instructional strategies from Visible Learning, ranked by effect size. The hinge point (d=0.40) separates strategies worth prioritizing from those that produce normal growth anyway.
How to use this toolkit: Focus your instructional energy above the hinge point (d > 0.40). Strategies below it aren't harmful — they just don't produce the accelerated growth that explicit teaching does. The dark blue bars mark strategies that are closest to what you already do at GES — these are worth deepening first.
- 1Teacher clarity1.17
- 2Feedback (teacher to student)0.70
- 3Prior knowledge activation0.93
- 4Reciprocal teaching0.74
- 5Metacognitive strategies0.69
- 6Vocabulary instruction0.67
- 7Spaced/distributed practice0.65
- 8Direct instruction0.60
- 9Concept mapping0.60
- 10Problem-solving teaching0.61
- 11Self-questioning0.64
- 12Worked examples0.57
- 13Summarization0.50
- 14Classroom discussion0.82
- 15Elaborative interrogation0.48
- 16Mastery learning0.55
- 17Deliberate practice0.47
- 18Formative evaluation0.90
- 19Writing to learn0.42
- 20Cooperative learning0.41
- 21Homework (K–5)0.29
- 22Class size reduction0.21
- 23Open/Discovery learning0.23
- 24Ability grouping (rigid)0.12
- 25Retention / Holding back a grade-0.16
Teacher clarity (1.17): Every lesson needs a visible learning intention + success criteria that students can access and use.
Formative evaluation (0.90): Checking understanding during instruction — not at the end. Weekly DIBELS, exit tickets, station data, FC minutes.
Prior knowledge activation (0.93): Non-negotiable before every new CKLA unit or math concept. This is where the lesson lives or dies.
Feedback (0.70): Specific, corrective, immediate. Praise is not feedback. "Try again" is not feedback. "You read 'slow' — look at the vowels again: o-w says /ow/" is feedback.
Open/Discovery learning (0.23): Students exploring without explicit instruction first. Surface-phase learners need structure before exploration.
Ability grouping — rigid (0.12): Permanent ability groups suppress growth. Data-driven flexible grouping (changing by skill) is different and more effective.
Homework K–5 (0.29): Below the hinge. Practice time in school with feedback produces far greater gains than independent home practice.
Grade retention (-0.16): Negative effect. An intervention plan within the current grade is always preferable.
Session 1: Surface Learning
Teachers experience and design explicit instruction at the surface phase — the foundation of all deep and transfer learning.
Facilitator notes: Don't tell staff what you're doing before the first version. The contrast is the point.
Use the effect size visualization on the Effect Size tab. Give staff 2 minutes to find the strategy they already use and identify its effect size. Brief partner share.
Facilitator debrief question: "Which version would your lowest-achieving student understand without you explaining it?" That's the target.
Grade-band differentiation: K–1 pairs work on phonics lesson intentions. Gr 2–3 on CKLA knowledge domain intentions. Gr 4–5 on writing task intentions.
Grade-band examples:
K–1: Decode a CKLA decodable word with full phoneme think-aloud
Gr 2–3: Model a text-dependent question response using think-aloud
Gr 4–5: Model an elaborative writing move with explicit reasoning narration
Facilitator notes: Circulate and listen for teachers who "show" without narrating the cognitive process. Prompt: "What were you thinking when you did that part?"
Key debrief questions:
• "What's the difference between showing and thinking aloud?"
• "When did you feel most certain as the learner? What caused that certainty?"
• "What's one move you'll make in Monday's lesson?"
(1) Learning Intention commitment: "In every lesson I will write the learning intention as a student-facing 'I can' statement with at least two success criteria students can see."
(2) Think-Aloud commitment: "In at least two lessons per week I will narrate my thinking aloud during the I Do phase."
Collect commitment cards. Return them at Session 2 for self-reflection. This is not accountability pressure — it is a research-validated commitment device (self-regulation d=0.52).
Explicit teaching is not the same as lecture. The teacher who talks the most is often being the least explicit. Explicit means the learning is visible to the student — not that the teacher is visible to the student.
Teacher clarity at d=1.17 means: when students know exactly what they are learning, why it matters, and what success looks like, they achieve nearly 3× the normal growth rate. This is the cheapest and most powerful intervention available.
Session 2: Deep Learning
Moving from surface acquisition to deep understanding — how explicit teaching changes when students already have the foundational knowledge and need to build connections and meaning.
Brief partner share (2 min). Facilitator names 2–3 examples without calling out individuals. This activates prior knowledge and sets the tone: implementation is the point, not compliance.
Discussion prompt: "Think of a lesson that didn't land last week. Where was the mismatch?" Give 2 minutes of quiet thinking, then partner share. Facilitator names patterns without solving — the goal is recognition, not prescription.
Guiding questions:
• Is the student recalling/recognizing/applying a taught procedure? → Surface
• Is the student comparing, explaining why, connecting across contexts? → Deep
• Is the student using this knowledge in a new context without prompting? → Transfer
Facilitator notes: Most K–2 work will be surface (appropriately). The concern is Grade 4–5 students whose work is still surface when the unit has been taught for 2+ weeks.
• A visible learning intention (deep or transfer phase)
• A teacher think-aloud or modeling move
• A CFU (check for understanding) at the 5-minute mark
• A connection to the CKLA domain or Reveal Math concept currently being taught
Grade-band scaffolds:
K–1: Design a Station A guided phonics re-teach for students still at surface on the current Skills Strand pattern
Gr 2–3: Design a Station A text discussion task for students who can retell but can't yet compare across texts
Gr 4–5: Design a Station A task that pushes students from summarizing to analyzing author's craft
Facilitator focus: Listen for whether feedback is about the task design (often) vs. the pedagogical moves embedded in it (what matters). Redirect feedback toward: "Does the teacher move make the learning visible to the student?"
Session 3: Reflection & Action Planning
Consolidating learning across the series, calibrating on what explicit teaching looks like in practice, and building a personal action plan for the remainder of the school year.
3–4 volunteers share briefly. Facilitator uses the Surface/Deep/Transfer framework to name what they're hearing. Goal: normalizing data-responsive teaching as the definition of explicit teaching.
Vignette 1 (K–1): A phonics lesson where the teacher shows a word and calls on volunteers to decode it. (Missing: I Do modeling / think-aloud)
Vignette 2 (Gr 2–3): A reading lesson where students independently read and answer comprehension questions without prior discussion. (Missing: prior knowledge activation / guided practice)
Vignette 3 (Gr 4–5): A writing lesson with a clear rubric, teacher model paragraph, and guided co-construction before independent writing. (Strong explicit teaching — name the moves)
Vignette 4 (Any grade): A station where students do a vocabulary card sort independently without teacher introduction of terms. (Missing: surface-phase instruction before independent practice)
1. My highest-leverage move (pick one from Hattie): What is the single explicit teaching practice you will commit to deepening over the next 90 days? Must be specific, classroom-level, and observable.
2. My evidence plan: How will you know it's working? What student data will you collect? How often? Who will you share it with?
3. My support request: What do you need from your principal / MTSS specialist / co-teacher to implement this? Be specific.
After 15 minutes individual writing: share plans in grade-band groups (3 people per group). Each person gives one strength and one question about the others' plans.
Debrief: What school-wide themes emerged? Are there patterns that point to a collective next step for the whole staff? This is the input for the next FC cycle focus.
Ask each person to write their answer to that question about today's PD on a sticky note. Collect. Read aloud 5–6 (anonymous). This is your formative evaluation of your own impact as the facilitator — and models exactly the mind frame you've been building toward.
Explicit Teaching Lesson Planner
Design your next lesson using the Visible Learning framework. Print or screenshot when complete.