‘The Hidden Lives of Learners’ by Graham Nuthall takes the reader on a journey of the undiscovered world of a ‘learner’. It explores the three different worlds which collectively shape a student’s learning – the actual and public world of the teacher, the highly influential world of the peers, and the student’s own private fantasy world and experiences. What the book makes very clear is that the teacher teaching does not, in any way, equate to the student actually learning.
Graham uses unique method of data collection and definitively documents the experience of what it really takes for most students to learn and retain a concept. In the author’s lifetime, the significance of his discoveries and the rare mix of quantitative and qualitative methods were widely recognised and appreciated, and still continue to be one of the foundation stones of evidence-based quality education in today’s times.
This book is the collective end-product of Professor Graham Nuthall’s forty years of research on learning and teaching. But realising that time waits for none and that most of his life’s work was laid out in learned papers for fellow researchers, he wrote this powerful book for a wider audience, for those who seek a better understanding of classroom learning.
Teachers who are concerned about their students and their way of learning will be fascinated by the voices of many students who praise this book and what those voices reveal about learning in a classroom. ‘The Hidden Lives of Learners’ is a precious gift from Graham Nuthall to teachers everywhere, all around the world.
This article originally appeared in the TeacherTribe Magazine January 2021 edition.