Faculty honours John Hattie at triple book launch
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A function to honour Professor John Hattie recently toasted his highly acclaimed books and his dedication and commitment to educational research.
Professor Hattie is well known internationally and is the author of Visible Learning: A synthesis of 800 meta-analyses on achievement. This event also celebrated two further publications he has recently co-authored entitled Adolescent Reputations and Risk: Developmental Trajectories to Delinquency, and Assessing Teachers for Professional Certification.
This brings his total number of books to twelve, and during his productive career he’s also been awarded 30 million dollars in research funding, supervised many postgraduate theses and written hundreds of articles and conference papers. However, this event was a time to not only celebrate these remarkable achievements but also an opportunity to pay tribute to the ongoing support he has received from family, friends and colleagues.
Those present enjoyed live music and were welcomed by the Head of the School of Teaching, Learning and Development Dr Frances Langdon who spoke highly of John and his work.
Dean of Education Associate Professor Graeme Aitken acknowledged that most academics would be happy launching one book so launching three books at once is definitely a “big deal.” Despite this, he admires the way Professor Hattie remains modest about his achievements.
“We really are fortunate to have someone who is not only a rigorous academic researcher but also a humble, dedicated and committed member of the faculty,” he said.
To date, Professor Hattie has supervised more than 160 doctoral students, and fellow academic Dr Christine Rubie-Davies recalled John’s work as her former doctoral supervisor. She referred to him as a mentor, friend, and colleague and said that she can’t speak highly enough of the support she has received from him.
“John is a very modest person,” she said, “and we need to make a fuss because he won’t. If we don’t I know he will quietly write three more books.”
According to John, Visible Learning was 15 years in the making, and each of the other books took 12 years. Understandably he’s rather relieved that they’re all finished. When pressed he has admitted he was a little surprised by the furore caused by Visible Learning. “It’s what I’ve been saying for years,” he said, “and I didn’t really think it was going to have the impact it did.”
Professor Hattie paid special tribute to his family including his wife Janet, and their three sons Joel, Kyle and Kieran for their support, understanding and patience while he worked on his research and writing projects. He particularly acknowledged Janet’s support in the arduous task of proofing some of his books.
Presently he is working on a multi-volume publication for teachers, putting the finishing touches to a book on intelligence and two sequels to Visible Learning; Visible Assessment and Visible Teaching.
