Bitesize Research: Importance Of Teacher Evaluative Thinking

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a good week! This week I was interested to see an article in Edutopia by renowned educational researcher John Hattie on the theme of teacher thinking. This is a longstanding interest of mine and is something that my ongoing doctoral research is connected to (do come and have a chat with me about this if you’re interested!) It also links to a previous bitesize research from July 2022, which is about teacher reflections.

Objectives: To understand the importance of teacher evaluative thinking

Summary: 

• Hattie contends that whilst there is no metaanalysis yet about this in the research literature, there are particular ways in which effective teachers think and evaluate, that demarcate them from less effective teachers.

• Hattie claims there are 5 core evaluative thinking skills for effective teachers, as follows:

• 1) Critical reasoning in evaluating the available evidence

• 2) Consistently checking the fidelity of implementing a particular strategy or method. In doing so, consistently evaluating unintended consequences and making adaptations to maximise effectiveness

• 3) Ensuring the thinking is specific to the major decisions that teacher as professionals make, namely, maximising the impact learning has on students

• 4) Scrutinising biases that may lead to false conclusions

• 5) Understanding the perspectives of others, enabling judgements to be made about the overall value of a strategy.

• Hattie therefore claims that educators with effective evaluative thinking often are slower to come to problem representations or conclusions - as these core thinking skills are complex and take time to apply to any given situation.

• He concludes that ‘we know quality teachers more by how they think and seek critique about their impact on students than by what they do and know’ and states about the importance of the relationships between students and their teachers.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How do I demonstrate my evaluative thinking skills? How does my professional learning log come into play with this?

• Which of the core evaluative thinking skills outlined by Hattie do I do well? Which do I want to develop further? How might I go about this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!