Visible Learning in the Classroom

The present study starts with defining the classroom as an educational micro-community that represents an ideal context for the development of leadership by educational actors through practicing simple rules and behaviors. These strategies develop as leadership skills training: organizing the learning environment, setting goals, time management, effective communication and the development of networks of communication, problem solving, conflict resolution, increasing self-confidence, etc. The paper attempts to measure how these skills work together, through a self-evaluation tool for teachers, and a questionnaire for students,
assessing whether teachers and students are ready to act in line with the concept of leadership.

My institution, a selective secondary school in the Channel Islands, has identified in its targets the following:  "Further develop and implement regular systems of formative and summative assessment and feedback which are consistently accurate and reliable indicators of student attainment and progress and which inform planning and future teaching."(Whole School Priorities for 2016-17, 2016)

The present study starts with defining the classroom as an educational micro-community that represents an ideal context for the development of leadership by educational actors through practicing simple rules and behaviors. These strategies develop as leadership skills training: organizing the learning environment, setting goals, time management, effective communication and the development of networks of communication, problem solving, conflict resolution, increasing self-confidence, etc. The paper attempts to measure how these skills work together, through a self-evaluation tool for teachers, and a questionnaire for students, assessing whether teachers and students are ready to act in line with the concept of leadership.

Blind spots in visible learning. When maximized learning is the goal a number of other problems become irrelevant. Drawing on a systems' theoretical functional analysis I compare possible problems and relevant knowledge as they are formulated in three educational handbooks that have had impact on Danish teacher education through the last 100 years. I show that the current focus on individual learning and correlations as form of knowledge is not at all evident as the only way of problematizing what goes on in a school class.