Highlights from the session by Beth Blackwood and Kim Edwards at the International Visible Learning Institute in Carlsbad, CA.
Contributed by Jeffrey Spanier, English and AVID teacher, Carlsbad High School, CA
I am an enormous believer in the importance of consistent, direct, and purposeful feedback as a primary way to efficiently improve student ability, especially as readers and writers. As a high school English teacher, I have found few other ways to promote student writing ability. As Principal Blackwood and Deputy Principal Edwards explained the approach their school takes in emphasizing feedback to all stakeholders (parents included), I found myself nodding enthusiastically. When they started to show us the detailed, digital forms used for feedback, I thought: how would teachers find the time to do this? As if reading my mind, another participant asked the question. Mrs. Blackwood readily admitted that the time commitment involved in this commitment to feedback was a bit overwhelming to her teachers. They found the time required to complete such thorough feedbacks to be daunting. By year’s end, she explained, the teachers found that the time commitment evened out since the student growth was more rapid and the number of assignments/feedback required in the last third of the year was significantly less than previous years.
I tried to imagine how I might give the amount of detailed feedback the system to the 200 students I teach annually. The teacher next to me whispered, I have 175 students—I don’t think I could do that for every assignment. And then Mrs. Blackwood gave the kicker. Her teachers maximum class load is 24. Some classes are maxed at 15.
At this point, I wondered about Mr. Hattie’s claims about class size not being a significant factor in student learning. If a teacher with a max of 124 students (Principal Blackwood’s school), struggled to complete the feedback, what about a teacher at my site averaging 200 students? Some of my questions were answered later on as I met other educators who were better versed in Hattie’s research and teaching Visible Learning. Class size, apparently, is defined in two ways: small (15 students to one teacher) and regular (24 students to one teacher). In terms of these numbers, class size is relatively low indicator of student success. But what about schools like Carlsbad High where a 38:1 student/ teacher ratio is deemed acceptable by district administrators?
I remain a believer in immediate, accurate, and purposeful feedback as a key factor in student improvement. And my belief in class sizes that allow for such feedback to be delivered in a consistent manner is also supported by the narrative shared by Mrs. Blackwood and Mrs. Edwards.
