Conflict of Interest

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair

Professor Ewald Terhardt (2011, p. 434), 

"A part of the criticism on Hattie condemns his close links to the New Zealand Government and is suspicious of his own economic interests in the spread of his assessment and training programme (asTTle). Similarly, he is accused of advertising elements of performance-related pay of teachers and he is being criticised for the use of asTTle as the administrative tool for scaling teacher performance. His neglect of social backgrounds, inequality, racism, etc., and issues of school structure is also held against him."

Barwe and Dahlström (2013) referring to Terhardt's criticism,

"The fact that Hattie would serve the interests of the New Zealand Government and, at the same time, promote his own Assessment tool for teaching and learning by advocating large classes is a serious allegation. It cannot be overlooked that it is precisely the New Zealand Government that has said that Hattie's study would have a considerable influence on schools." (translated, p. 25).

Hattie is once again promoting e-AsTTle in his collaboration with Pearson (p. 13) - What Works In Education.

In the TV series Revolution School, he also promoted e-AsTTle and his Visible Classroom app for which he receives royalties (O'Neill et al., 2016).

Hattie does not divulge his financial interest in either of these programs.

Professor John O'Neill (2012, p. 2) wrote a timely warning, about Hattie's influence on Education policy and his financial interest in the solutions proposed:

"The discourse seeks to portray the public sector as ‘ineffective, unresponsive, sloppy, risk-averse and innovation-resistant’ yet at the same time it promotes celebration of public sector 'heroes' of reform and new kinds of public sector 'excellence'. Relatedly, Mintrom (2000) has written persuasively in the American context, of the way in which ‘policy entrepreneurs’ position themselves politically to champion, shape and benefit from school reform discourses."

The New Zealand Education Union commissioned a detailed analysis by Prof O'Neill et al. (2016), 'Charities, Philanthropists, Policy Entrepreneurs, International Companies and State Schooling in Aotearoa New Zealand', which provided more detail about policy entrepreneurship,

"Schooling policy networks come into being and flourish due to the interactions of the entrepreneurial policy actors who navigate them. These actors collaborate and network in order to materially influence state schooling policy development and services delivery. Actors may operate as individuals, groups or organisations. 

In New Zealand, the consummate schooling policy actor since the late 1990s has been Professor John Hattie, ... Hattie’s now global social networking approach might reasonably be described as a seamless fabrication of his public-good, not-for-profit and for-profit policy entrepreneurship and advocacy. His original scholarly work in the university setting has since been packaged, branded and monetised through the Visible Learning book series and Visible LearningPlus programme of teacher workshops and associated school certification offered internationally under licence to various commercial partners by Cognition Education; and most recently through the Visible Classroom App which has been commercialised in Australia, the UK and the USA via a partnership between the University of Melbourne and Ai-Media." (p. viii)

O'Neill et al. (2016) then detail some of Hattie's earnings from the company Cognition (p. 49):

Furthermore they also detail that Hattie became a director of Cognition Education in 2008 and note that the above fees are ADDITIONAL to Hattie's director fees for Cognition and also Hattie's book sales. (p. 48)

In his interview with Knudsen (2017, p. 3) Hattie states,

"I have 23 different licensees around the world. It’s all done through Cognition in Auckland. We develop the concepts together."

Then again,

"No, I am not a businessman. If I was in this for the money, I probably could have made millions of dollars" (p. 8).

Corwin purchased the rights of Visible Learningplus from Cognition in 2018 - The Press Release here.

Corwin stated, 

"John Hattie chose to work with Corwin since he believed Corwin would be able to expand the reach of the Visible Learningplus work."

Thrupp et al. (2020) commented on this,

"Cognition onsold Visible Learning Plus to Corwin in 2018, and is becoming increasingly international in its work, rather than being primarily about PLD provision in New Zealand." (p. 14)

Profit from NOT-for Profit?

In a range of analyses on this development of the profiteering - NOT-for Profit companies (O'Neill et al. (2016), Thrupp et al. (2021))

"Cognition Education Ltd. and CORE Education Ltd. Both are registered ‘not-for-profit’ educational charitable trusts, yet each trust also operates its own for-profit business." (Thrupp et al (2021). p. 12)

Thrupp et al. (2021) further detail,

"As in other countries, some New Zealand education scholars have resisted privatisation, while others have been actively involved in privatising educational knowledge, research and programmes. The most prominent critic of educational privatisation during the 1990s was the late Professor Ivan Snook of Massey University, who was also one of the founders of the Quality Public Education Coalition (QPEC), a community organisation that runs an annual forum and acts as a clearing house for concerns about educational privatisation. At the same time, other scholars have sought to privatise, and profit from, their education research, for instance, John Hattie’s ‘Visible Learning’ and Russell Bishop’s ‘Culture Counts’, while others continue to seek and receive research funding from venture philanthropies, such as NEXT Foundation. Indeed academics, like educators in schools, have become caught up with private sector interests in a myriad of ways." (p. 11)

Yet, Hattie (2014) defended the claim made by many academics,

"that somehow I am making money out of the ventures except for book royalties, this is incorrect." (p. 94).

But, Cognition CEO Terry Bates (2017) also contradicted Hattie's claim, saying, 

"Hattie received a royalty on ALL VL-related income" (p. 59)

Hattie also stated in a 2018 interview with Ollie Lovell (here @74min) that if anyone buys Visible Learning they buy from Corwin not him! He also stated there are all sorts of contracts in place to make sure of this.

Hattie does give more detail about his contracts, in his interview with Knudsen (2017),

"there are two things you worry about: One is quality control, and the other is to make sure that if your licensee does not deliver on quality control, you have to have very tight legal contracts so they can be fired overnight." (p. 3).

O'Neill et al. (2016) identify Hattie's strategy,

"Historically, education has been a principal objective of charitable activity. In state education, there are reputational and market advantages to be gained from the perception that an individual or organisation is acting altruistically for general public benefit, and not from a personal private benefit or shareholder profit motive." (p. 3)

In July 2024, Stephen Vainker reported an estimate of the revenue generated by Visible Learning conferences. This post offered insights into the potential financial scale of these educational events, 

Visible Classroom App

Hattie & his wife, Janet Clinton, in collaboration with Melbourne University, have developed a Visible Classroom App. This app was displayed on the Australian TV documentary Revolution School. The Melbourne University Website shows (here) a royalty-sharing arrangement with the Hatties.

In the Lovell interview, Hattie also boasts the original Visible Learning book has sold more than 500,000 copies.

In his lectures, highly reputed epidemiologist Prof John Ioannidis calls for a separation of advocacy and science. He gives examples of where advocacy and science get mixed, highlighting academics' conflicts of interest when selling books advocating a particular view. He also highlights the bias this causes to the researcher in the researcher's methods. (Ioannidis, 2021, around 32minutes)

Poulsen (2014) is similarly suspicious of Hattie's economic interests,

".... Hattie has become so sure in his conclusions that he has organized one (worldwide?) course and consulting company that will spread the knowledge research results and train teachers to teach more effectively... Here he joins a well known American tradition for promptly converting new knowledge into new business.

But there is and will be a difference in an open research concept and a profit-oriented course and consultant project, the last definition must work every time while research constantly strives to falsify its own former truths" (p. 5, translated from Danish).

As is Rømer (2016) and Sjøberg (2012, p. 1),

"... Hattie wants to build an educational position and practice; a project that is enhanced by the fact that Hattie and his consultants are very active in developing and selling educational concepts, for example,Visible Learningplus."

McKnight & Whitburn (2018, pp 12 ff) in Seven Reasons to Question the Hegemony of Visible Learning, continue the debate on conflict of interest,

"The Visible Learning cult is not about teachers and students, but the Visible Learning brand. It is not dialogic, it brooks no argument and is sedimented and corralled by its trademarks and proprietary symbols. As we comply, we wonder if we should; assent and unease intertwined are the defining reactions to neoliberalism’s imperatives. Educators need to be alert to affect here, and to what it may mean... 

Teacher professionalism requires 'working with colleagues in collaborative cultures of help and support as a way of using shared expertise to solve the on-going problems of professional practice, rather than engaging in joint work as a motivational device to implement the external mandates of others' (Hargreaves & Goodson, 1996, p. 20). Visible Learning demands the latter, and not coincidentally, also requires the consumption of the artefacts, including the professional development sessions, the books, the websites, and the videos. These almanacs, with their tips for teachers, offer quick fix solutions without addressing the crises of education in an increasingly complex world (Slee, 2011). In the case of the Visible Learning brand, certain teachers become licenced as fans, for example in Hattie’s collected case studies of impact (2016). 

Hattie has effected the shift from intrinsic accountability to extrinsic accountability, negating teachers’ awareness that “professional knowledge is provisional, unfinalizable, culturally produced and historically situated” (Locke, 2015, p. 82). It cannot meaningfully be reduced to a list of strategies."

McKnight & Whitburn (2018, pp. 2ff) are also concerned about Hattie's portrayal in the TV series Revolution School as,

"the potential saviour of public education and redeemer of recalcitrant teachers."

They also question the financial conflict of interest of Visible Learning,

"Where are the flows of capital around Visible Learning? Where is capital and what kinds of capital are accruing for those producing “Visible Learning” as a brand? What material and financial benefits flow on to teachers and students?" (p. 6).

Professor Scott Eacott (2018, p. 4), discusses Hattie's "complicity" in the expanding commercial arrangements he has acquired even though Hattie has denied the magnitude of such arrangements.

Eacott then questions the "substantial commercial arrangements" Hattie has with Corwin and ACEL (p. 5).

Glass & Berliner (2014) with 19 other distinguished academics also concurs with John O'Neill in, 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education,

"The mythical failure of public education has been created and perpetuated in large part by political and economic interests that stand to gain from the destruction of the traditional system. There is an intentional misrepresentation of facts through a rapidly expanding variety of organizations and media that reach deep into the psyche of the nation's citizenry. These myths must be debunked. Our method of debunking these myths and lies is to argue against their logic, or to criticize the data supporting the myth, or to present more credible contradictory data." (p. 4).

Professor Pierre-Jérôme Bergeron in his voicEd interview also talks about Hattie's conflict of interest and Hattie's reluctance to address the details of his critics. Listen here - at 18min.

Hattie (2009, p. 252) quotes Cohen, 

"New and revolutionary ideas in teaching will tend to be resisted rather than welcomed with open arms, because every successful teacher has a vested intellectual, social, and even financial interest in maintaining the status quo."

Given Hattie's commercial arrangements with Cognition, Corwin and Pearson; who paid Hattie for the intellectual rights to Visual Laboratories and Hattie's financial interest in the solutions provided to schools. This is a remarkable double standard! 

It is disappointing that Hattie once again criticises the easy target - the teacher.

Dr Jonathan Becker, similarly critics Marzano, for his lack of independence, due to his financial arrangement with Promethean in his research.

Nick Rose goes into more detail regarding financial conflicts of interest and research.

Joshua Katz's YouTube presentation went viral regarding financial conflict of interest in Education.