ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the major findings that will be elaborated in the following chapters. The aim of this book is not to overwhelm with detail from the more than 50,000 studies and 800+ meta-analyses that form the basis of the discussion. Instead, the aim is to build an explanatory story about the influences on student learning and then to convince the reader of the nature and value of the story by working through the evidence to defend it. It is as much theory generation as it is theory appraisal. The art in any synthesis is the overall message, and the simple adage underlying most of the syntheses in this book is “visible teaching and learning”. Visible teaching and learning occurs when learning is the explicit goal, when it is appropriately challenging, when the teacher and the student both (in their various ways) seek to ascertain whether and to what degree the challenging goal is attained, when there is deliberate practice aimed at attaining mastery of the goal, when there is feedback given and sought, and when there are active, passionate, and engaging people (teacher, student, peers, and so on) participating in the act of learning. It is teachers seeing learning through the eyes of students, and students seeing teaching as the key to their ongoing learning. The remarkable feature of the evidence is that the biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers. When students become their own teachers they exhibit the self-regulatory attributes that seem most desirable for learners (self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-assessment, self-teaching). Thus, it is visible teaching and learning by teachers and students that makes the difference. The following chapters provide the evidence to defend this overall message.
