The Best Thing To Have Your Students Do

I am reading a book for a course I'm taking by John Hattie called Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. In this book, Hattie discusses effect size in relation to student achievement. In research, effect sizes can be measured anywhere from 0.0 to 1.0. According to Hattie, "an effect size of 1.0 would mean that, on average, students receiving that treatment would exceed 84% of students not receiving that treatment." In simpler terms, 1.0 would mean very obvious change in improvement, where 0.0 would mean no change at all.

Chapter 4 of Hattie's book discusses effect sizes with contributions from the student. Of all the strategies listed in this section, the one with the largest effect size in his research was self-reported grades. (This had an effect size of 1.44!)

This doesn't suggest students need to be completing their own report cards. It does suggest, however, that students need to be given opportunities to estimate their own performance and reflect on their achievement levels. (Are Marzano's scales ringing a bell to anyone?)

Engage students in meta-cognition (thinking about their thinking) and require them to set high expectations for learning.

Please comment if you have successful ways for students to self-report their knowledge.