Is a bad teacher a big deal?

John Hattie’s review of 500,000 students in New Zealand highlights the impact of teacher quality. It shows that teachers have a bigger impact on student performance than any other single factor — bar the students own identity and ability as a learner.

So, is it right to be concerned as a parent when your kids come home disheartened citing their teacher as the reason for switching off at school?

You may know first hand the pang in your gut when you see your child’s love of learning dwindling when they begin to build resentment to a specific subject they once loved or even education as a whole. When you first hear them utter identity-defining words like ‘I am not a maths person’, it can be a blow.

When our kids don’t connect with their teacher, our perennial positive parental spin that comes from our hopes that our child will buck the trends and grow to be a passionate lifelong learner has us say things like “you are going to come across people in life you don’t get on with…” and “you need to learn how to work with people that don’t like you…” and, in some ways, of course, this is true. As plants often get deeper roots during adverse seasons, we often learn through the tough seasons of life. But as we wouldn’t intentionally leave our prized pot plants dehydrated all summer, what do we do when our children are in an environment where they might wilt? I’ve faced this situation with both my children, and it’s not always a straight forward problem to solve.

But it’s not all bad. There is the mirror situation, when a teacher sparks curiosity in our young, when we see their hunger to understand and their belief in themselves sparkle and perk up, we ourselves come alive, and our hopes for our young to flourish are stoked back to life. We know that this could be a teacher that helps set our child up for a life of passionate pursuit and confident self-determination.

Sometimes, it can feel like our child’s education is down to chance even with the best intentions. It’s a teacher lottery. So what can we do?

There is hope.

Hattie’s conclusion that the teacher had ‘the biggest impact’ on learning is one that I think needs deeper inspection. The variance in performance is 30% from a teacher. That’s a big influence. But, 50% comes down to the learner. This is where more research is needed to see how we can support learners to develop in a way that can both capitalise on the opportunity of having a great teacher, but also minimise the impact of having a teacher that the learner doesn’t get on with.

In our work at Cormirus, we spend time with high school students, where any one teacher's impact tends to be lower than those in primary school. Instead of 30+ hours per week with one teacher, they will spend between 4–6 hours with many different teachers. But even then it’s a bit of a lottery. There still seems to be a high correlation between how much students like their teacher and their interest and motivation in that subject. My intention is not to judge any teacher — I’ve been married to one for 20 years. I think they have a tough job and are doing good work supporting many different pupils' needs at any time. And you can’t get on with everyone no matter how hard you try. But unless our kids see the school and their teachers for what they are (resources for them to tap into on their own learning journey), their locus of control will sit outside of them, and teacher quality might hugely impact their future. We need our students to have far more autonomy, self-determination and personal responsibility for their own learning.

At Cormirus, we believe that the best teachers are more like coaches and that in many ways, coaching eats teaching for breakfast. The best teachers can set students up to thrive regardless of what future teachers or environmental conditions are like. They do this by helping them do far more than master a subject — they help them become confident, resilient, passionate learners. This is what coaches do; they grow people. We hypothesize that you only need one impeccably great coach/teacher to set you up for a lifelong love of learning.

Matthew Syed, the author of Bounce, Black box Thinking, Dare to Be You, Rebel Thinking and You are Awesome, writes a lot on coaching. In a Times article (sorry it’s behind a paywall), he mentioned the coach that had such a big impact in his life and helped him become the UK champion in Table Tennis. In the article, Syed elaborates that the teacher contributes to the biggest variance in performance. He quotes Eric Hanushek, of Stanford University, who said: “No other attributes of schools comes close to having this much influence on a students achievement”. Syed explores the idea that ‘the best coaches are those who are great learners themselves’. These coaches are curious and never stop exploring and learning. These great coaches never think there is nothing new to learn. They always believe there are better ways to connect, inspire and encourage learners to develop and grow. They role model the behaviours of curiosity and a thirst for doing better.

It’s similar to the idea dramatised in the film, McFarland USA. It’s based on a true story of how a running coach took kids who spent their lives picking in fields, not having the best prospects and not really engaging in structured school systems and helped them all be the first in their families to go to college.

What he did was develop a belief in the learners and gave them the tools to learn. In a world where content is freely available kids need less content delivery and more focus on developing their identity as great learners.

Hattie suggested that teachers who provided a constructive challenge, have the ability to create Deep Representation of a topic, and those who provided excellent Monitoring and Feedback separated the expert and experienced educator. And the impact of an expert teacher is significant over a merely experienced one.

However, something is missing. It doesn’t really dig into things a good coach might help with such as inspiration, instilling belief and helping students to identify the internal challenges and remove the blockers holding them back. This is the power of coaching and can complement formal academic systems. This is what helps people reach the top of their fields. It also helps people who lack the opportunity and ability to be the first in their families to ‘be successful’.

For me, making this available to everyone is a step in the journey of democratising learning. The lottery as to whether a child has access to a teacher who they work well with or not can be mitigated by providing access to a great coach’s qualities and giving the student the mindset, self-management skills and meta-skills of a great learner. Even if the student is fortunate to get the best teacher that stretches them, they will have even more skills to make the most of the opportunity in front of them. There is no downside in spending time focusing on the skills of a great learner.