research on teacher quality demonstrates that quizlet

Testing Teacher Candidates: The Role of Licensure Tests in Improving Teacher Quality (2001)

Chapter: 2. defining teacher quality, 2 defining teacher quality.

Defining teacher quality is fundamental to understanding the role of licensure tests in promoting it. This chapter discusses the variety of ways in which teacher quality has been defined and describes the standards that form the basis for some of the current definitions. It suggests that the knowledge and skills used by competent teachers are many and varied.

To learn whether or how licensure tests might promote teacher quality, the committee believes it is important to distinguish teacher quality from teaching quality. States and local districts play an important role in promoting teaching quality. If schools are not well organized and supportive, it is possible that even good teachers will not be successful (Raudenbush et al., 1992). Successful teaching depends on many factors, including the level of instructional resources available, staffing levels, continuing professional development, and support from administrators and parents (Johnson, 1990). The school and community forces that shape teachers’ practices and student learning are numerous and important.

This chapter examines teacher quality—the knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions of teachers. Defining teacher quality is no simple task, though, because the criteria for doing so vary from person to person, from one community to another, and from one era to the next. This chapter begins with a review of some of the country’s most prominent historical definitions of teacher quality. It then discusses current definitions of teacher competence by describing themes that are common to the teaching standards that have been developed by states, national organizations, and organizations that accredit teacher preparation programs.

We use the standards of the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Edu-

cation (NCATE), and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) to discuss current conceptions of teacher quality. INTASC is a consortium of state education agencies promoting standards-based reform through the development of licensing standards for beginning teachers. INTASC provides a vehicle for states to work together on licensing standards and assessments for beginning teachers. NCATE has been strengthening standards for teacher education programs, recently incorporating the performance standards developed by INTASC in the development of standards for accreditation of teacher education programs. NBPTS has developed standards for advanced certification, describing what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do. NBPTS has established a national voluntary system to assess and certify teachers to meet its standards. These various standards represent contemporary views of teacher quality and are relied on, in part, for the discussion below of what teachers need to know and do to promote student learning.

PAST DEFINITIONS OF TEACHER QUALITY

Teaching is, first and foremost, a cultural activity, and notions of teacher quality have changed over time as American society has shifted its values and concerns. Moreover, at any given time, different individuals and groups can hold very different ideas about teacher quality. A review of past definitions of teacher quality can provide a context for understanding contemporary definitions.

Teachers Should Personify Virtue

One popular criterion for teacher quality is high moral character. Teachers are often expected to be good role models for students and to represent the highest standards of social propriety. This view of teacher quality was especially widespread in the early 1900s. At that time, teachers were often placed on pedestals, so to speak, as were ministers. When a teacher entered a room, people stopped talking and became self-conscious and embarrassed. To illustrate the importance of moral character in teaching, Willard Waller, writing in 1932, provided this interesting contract that teachers in one community were expected to sign:

I promise to take a vital interest in all phases of Sunday-school work, donating of my time, service, and money without stint for the uplift and benefit of the community.

I promise to abstain from all dancing, immodest dressing and any other conduct unbecoming a teacher and a lady.

I promise not to go out with any young men except insofar as it may be necessary to stimulate Sunday-school work.

I promise not to fall in love, to become engaged, or secretly married.

I promise not to encourage or tolerate the least familiarity on the part of any of my boy pupils.

I promise to remember that I owe a duty to the townspeople who are paying my wages, that I owe respect to the school board and the superintendent that hired me, and that I shall consider myself at all times the willing servant of the school board and the townspeople (p. 43).

While this contract is quite dated, the notion that virtue is important is still widely discussed, and entire books are devoted to the place of ethics and moral behavior in contemporary teaching (van Manen, 1991; Noddings, 1984; Tom, 1980).

Teachers Should Transmit Cultural and Educational Values

Another definition of teacher quality emphasizes a broader range of personality and character traits—such as curiosity, enthusiasm, and compassion. Interest in personality traits was especially widespread in the decades immediately following World War II, partly in response to popular psychoanalytical theories and partly in response to concerns that America needed to ensure that it would not be susceptible to the totalitarian influences that had captivated other countries (Adorno et al., 1950; McGee, 1955). Each personality trait had its own rationale, and each was the subject of a variety of efforts to develop measures that could be used in screening candidates for teaching. For example, one theory held that a certain kind of personality, the authoritarian personality, was especially susceptible to fascist influences. The authoritarian personality was defined as someone who respected social hierarchy and felt unusually strong admiration and loyalty to those in positions of authority (Adorno et al., 1950). Associated with this broader social concern was a concern about the extent to which teachers might be fostering authoritarian values in school and a belief that American society would benefit if teachers’ personalities were the antithesis of the authoritarian personality. Thus, there was a great deal of interest in finding a way to measure authoritarian values and to use those measures to screen teaching candidates.

It is worth noting that researchers working during this period generally assumed that gains in student achievement were not good indicators of teacher quality because they represented far too narrow a range of outcomes. It was assumed that, in addition to fostering student learning, teachers served as moral role models and that they instilled a variety of social values in their students. Consequently, when researchers tried to evaluate their measures of teachers’ personal qualities, they usually looked for evidence of a relationship to observed practices or to principals’ ratings of teachers, rather than evidence of a relationship to student achievement (Getzels and Jackson, 1963).

Teachers Should Competently Teach the Prescribed Curricula

Another definition of teacher quality focuses on teachers’ skills rather than their morality or personality traits. This approach to teacher quality was especially widespread in the post-Sputnik era when American policy makers sponsored numerous curriculum design efforts and wanted teachers to implement the programs exactly as specified.

Pursuing the idea of the teacher with technical skills, researchers in the next decades focused on observing teachers in their classrooms, at first to see how well they were implementing specific curricula and later to document specific teaching practices that seemed to be associated with gains in students’ test scores (Brophy and Good, 1986). This latter body of work focused on discrete practices such as questioning and lesson pacing. This research came to be known as “process-product” research, since it sought relationships between classroom processes and the product of gains in student achievement. This movement marked the first time that student achievement became a widely accepted criterion for teacher quality. The goal of this research was to identify specific behaviors that other teachers could emulate. Researchers focused on such skills as question asking, lesson pacing, and clarity in explanations.

It is important to recall, too, that early in this country’s educational history, Americans were operating separate school systems for black students and white students and did not pay much attention to the needs of other nonwhite groups in education policies and practices. Most discussions about teacher quality, at least until the 1960s, referred mainly to white teachers teaching white students. The situation changed somewhat in the 1950s and 1960s, after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. Even then, though, discussions among mostly white scholars and politicians tended to focus more on the distribution of education resources than on questions of teacher quality.

CURRENT DEFINITIONS OF TEACHER COMPETENCE

These examples demonstrate how definitions of teacher quality have varied across time. In the 1980s and 1990s, Americans—particularly American policy makers—developed yet another definition of teacher quality. Today’s definition of teacher quality differs from its predecessors in several ways. First, it acknowledges the diversity of the student population in a way not previously done. Second, it asks for a level of instruction that is more intellectually rigorous and meaningful than has traditionally been the case. These definitions of teacher quality are less concerned with teachers’ character traits or technical proficiency and more concerned with teachers’ ability to engage students in rigorous, meaningful activities that foster academic learning for all students. Finally, current statements on teacher quality are standards based and define the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that teachers should demonstrate.

Recent attempts to define teacher quality have sought ways to broadly represent the views of the field and to benefit teacher development and assessment. Although the field does not unanimously support the teaching standards that have resulted, a significant degree of professional consensus is implied by the wide adoption of standards for beginning teachers, for the accreditation of teacher education programs, and for accomplished teachers. Several factors—both internal and external to the fields of education and teacher preparation—have coalesced to impel the development of teacher standards.

Current Standards for Teacher Competence

Three organizations have been particularly active in establishing standards for teacher quality, and all have relied on both research and consensus-building procedures to do so. The first, NBPTS, was created in 1987 and has developed a national, voluntary system for testing and rewarding accomplished teaching. NBPTS provides certificates to teachers seeking advanced credentials. INTASC was created shortly after NBPTS. The consortium of states working with INTASC has developed “National Board-compatible” licensing standards and assessments for beginning teachers. The standards developed by NBPTS and INTASC are linked to one another and to the student standards developed by national disciplinary organizations and states.

INTASC and NBPTS have used consensus models to develop teacher standards. In developing their core standards, both have worked with teachers and other experts in child development, teacher education, and the academic disciplines. They formed standards development committees to examine the literature on teaching, learning, and best practices and to describe what beginning and accomplished teachers need to know and be able to do. They drafted teaching standards that identify the knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions needed to teach. The draft standards were broadly vetted with teachers, teacher educators, and relevant professional bodies. They were critiqued at professional meetings and in focus group sessions. Revisions to the core standards were made to reflect the input and describe the consensus of the field. The consensus-based development models used by INTASC and NBPTS seek to identify competencies about which there is consensus in the field.

This work resulted in NBPTS’s five propositions for accomplished teachers and INTASC’s model standards for beginning teachers. NCATE’s standards are aligned with the INTASC principles. Because of the research that guided development of the standards and to the consensus model that the organizations used to garner support from the field for those standards, the committee chose to use them to describe current conceptions of teacher competence. The INTASC, NCATE, and NBPTS standards appear in Appendix B of this volume. Readers interested in additional information about the research utilized during the development of these standards can refer to What Teachers Should Know and Be Able

to Do (NBPTS, 1994), Model Standards for Beginning Teacher Licensing and Development (INTASC, 1992), and Standards, Procedures and Policies for the Accreditation of Professional Education Units (NCATE, 1997).

Themes from Standards for Teachers

All three sets of standards examine teaching in light of learning. They explicitly acknowledge that teachers’ actions or performances depend on many kinds of knowledge and on dispositions to use that knowledge and to work with others to support the learning and success of all students. These initiatives incorporate knowledge about teaching and learning that supports a view of teaching as complex, contingent on students’ needs and instructional goals, and reciprocal—that is, continually shaped and reshaped by students’ responses to learning events. The standards take into account the teaching challenges posed by a student body that is multicultural and multilingual. The standards recognize the learning styles of special-needs students and of students who possess different learning styles. By reflecting new subject matter standards for students and the demands of diverse learners, as well as the expectation that teachers should collaborate with colleagues and parents in order to succeed, the standards define teaching as a collegial, professional activity that responds to considerations of subjects, content, and students.

The three sets of standards are substantively connected and represent a continuum of development along a teacher’s career path. The INTASC standards describe the knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions of beginning teachers. The NCATE standards are targets for the approval of teacher education programs and describe the knowledge and skills of teacher candidates. The NBPTS standards describe accomplished teaching. In the next section, central themes that emerge across the standards are described. Because the categories of teacher competence of the NBPTS standards are broader and therefore fewer in number, the committee used them here to organize discussion of the themes.

Teachers Are Committed to Their Students and Students’ Learning

A central theme across the three sets of standards is that teachers should be committed to their students and their students’ learning. Teachers should act on the belief that all students can learn and should develop and use curricula that encourage students to see, question, and interpret ideas. To ensure that all students do learn, teachers should understand how the developmental levels of their students affect learning and how classroom instruction should be modified to reflect students’ needs. They should foster students’ self-esteem, motivation, civic responsibility, and respect for others.

To accommodate and respond to the needs of all their students, teachers should also understand and modify instruction to incorporate learning opportuni-

ties for students with learning disabilities; visual and perceptual disabilities; and speech, physical, and mental challenges. To fully understand their students and how they learn, teachers should recognize the ways in which cultural backgrounds and other sources of diversity shape students’ perspectives on the content and process of learning. The standards say teachers should understand how students’ personal and family backgrounds shape their talents and perspectives. This is especially important because today’s students come from varied cultural backgrounds. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2000), racial/ethnic minority students made up 22 percent of the country’s student population in the early 1970s. In 1998 the percentage of students from minority backgrounds enrolled in public schools had increased to 37 percent. The excerpts in Box 2–1 from the INTASC, NCATE, and NBPTS standards explain these ideas more fully. The full texts of the standards are contained in Appendix B .

Teachers Have Deep Subject Matter Knowledge

Another important theme of the standards is the need for deep subject matter knowledge. Teachers should know the substance and structure of the disciplines they teach. They should be able to translate difficult substantive ideas into terms that students can understand, to diagnose students’ understandings and misunderstandings, and to develop explanations, examples, and representations, including learning activities themselves, that are appropriate for students’ levels of understanding. INTASC, NCATE, and NBPTS standards on the need for subject matter knowledge appear in Box 2–2 .

Teachers Manage and Monitor Student Learning

To ensure that students progress, teachers should know how to identify learning goals and choose from a variety of teaching and learning strategies that will engage students in the learning process. This includes selecting the necessary educational resources (computers, books, and audiovisual equipment), selecting the most appropriate instructional role (instructor, facilitator, coach, or audience), and effectively implementing instructional strategies in the classroom. Occurring simultaneously with the management of student learning is the monitoring of student learning through ongoing assessment of student progress. Hence, teachers should be aware of the different kinds of assessments that can be used in the classroom, such as criterion-referenced and norm-referenced tests, traditional standardized and performance-based tests, observation systems, and portfolios of student work. The standards in Box 2–3 describe the knowledge, skills, and dispositions teachers need to manage and monitor student learning.

Teachers Are Reflective About Their Teaching

Teachers make decisions that affect their students’ learning throughout the day and over the course of the school year. To feel comfortable with their decisions, competent teachers evaluate these decisions and experiences and make continual adjustments in their curricular plans in response to students’ progress. They revise their own repertoire of behaviors, classrooms rules, and learning activities as they learn more about how their students tend to respond to these things.

The standards call for teachers to be reflective about their practice. Teachers should use classroom observation, information about students, the professional literature, colleagues, and other resources as sources for evaluating the outcomes of their teaching. They should experiment with, reflect on, and revise their practice to improve their effectiveness in meeting students’ needs and achieving instructional goals. To be reflective requires teacher candidates and accomplished teachers to be self-directed, to engage in critical thinking about

their teaching, and to be open and responsive to feedback received from other professional colleagues. The standards in Box 2–4 address reflective teaching.

Teachers Are Members of a Broader Community

The final theme of the standards recognizes that teaching does not occur in a vacuum. Students and any individual classroom are part of a larger context both within and outside the school. The teacher needs to understand the role of the school and the staff in the broader community. Specifically, the teacher understands how factors in students’ environments outside school, such as family circumstances, community environments, health, and economic conditions, may

influence students’ lives and learning. To this end, the teacher makes a concerted effort to establish relationships with students’ parents and guardians. Within the school, the teacher also participates in collegial activities designed to make the entire school a cohesive unit and a productive learning environment. Box 2–5 provides excerpts from the INTASC, NCATE, and NBPTS standards.

These standards illustrate the wide range of knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions that contemporary educators believe competent teachers must possess and demonstrate in the classroom. Competent teachers are committed to their students and students’ learning, possess deep subject matter knowledge, effectively manage and monitor student learning, are reflective about their teaching, and are members of the broader school community. The standards are useful in providing a framework of the complexities and multiple dimensions of teaching, yet, as

mentioned earlier, there is not complete consensus in the field about these standards. Concerns with the standards have included challenges to the research base that supports the NCATE standards (Ballou and Podgursky, 1999) and issues about the breadth of the statements that define the standards (Richardson, 1994; Roth, 1996).

The breadth of the standards causes problems in developing assessments, as their broad nature leaves open a variety of interpretations (Roth, 1996). This makes it difficult to translate the standards into test specifications and to develop assessments of the intended skills. The ongoing development of content-specific standards by NBPTS and INTASC begins to address this issue. Also, it is not explicitly stated what level of performance the standards relate to—the ideal, normative, or minimum? A third concern relates to a teacher’s ability to demonstrate all of the behaviors denoted in the INTASC standards. As Richardson (1994:17) states: “Is it possible for a beginning teacher to attain the deep knowledge and understanding of classrooms, students, context, and subject matter implied in these principles?”

The next chapter shows how the field has attempted to develop teacher tests and assessments based on standards of teacher competence. The NBPTS assessments examine the performance of experienced teachers and are not the focus of this report. This report is about testing for initial licensure. Initial licensing tests are not intended to test for advanced levels of performance or for all of the knowledge and skills characteristic of accomplished teachers. They are intended to test the knowledge and skills of entry-level teachers. Building on the teaching competencies outlined in current teacher standards, Chapter 3 describes the procedures that states use to identify the knowledge and skills needed for minimally competent beginning practice. It examines current state tests and other initial licensure requirements.

Definitions of what teachers should know and be able to do have changed over time as society’s values have changed, and they will continue to do so. The job of teaching students to learn and use new information, develop and apply skills, and think critically is highly complex and demanding. Teachers need to motivate and engage all students, including students from varied backgrounds and those with different learning and language needs. In addition to being responsible for student learning, teachers are expected to provide safe and nurturing classrooms, serve as good role models, and to engage parents and the community in the business of their school. Teachers need a wide range of knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions to perform these many complex tasks.

The quality of teaching in a school depends on more than just individual teacher quality. It also depends on factors such as the amount and quality of

instructional resources available, teacher professional development, staffing, and support from administrators and parents.

There is no single agreed-upon definition of what competencies a beginning teacher should have. Different professional organizations and many states have recently developed standards for teachers. The fact that different states have affiliations with these national and regional standards development efforts suggests some agreement between states about standards for teacher competence. Given that states have different educational standards for students, have teacher candidate pools with different characteristics, and that licensing of teachers is a state responsibility, it is not surprising that there is some variation in the knowledge and skills that states seek for beginning teachers.

Americans have adopted a reform agenda for their schools that calls for excellence in teaching and learning. School officials across the nation are hard at work targeting instruction at high levels for all students. Gaps remain, however, between the nation's educational aspirations and student achievement. To address these gaps, policy makers have recently focused on the qualifications of teachers and the preparation of teacher candidates.

This book examines the appropriateness and technical quality of teacher licensure tests currently in use, evaluates the merits of using licensure test results to hold states and institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of teacher preparation and licensure, and suggests alternatives for developing and assessing beginning teacher competence.

Teaching is a complex activity. Definitions of quality teaching have changed and will continue to change over time as society's values change. This book provides policy makers, teacher testers, and teacher educators with advice on how to use current tests to assess teacher candidates and evaluate teacher preparation, ensuring that America's youth are being taught by the most qualified candidates.

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Topic Areas

• Teacher Quality

Quality teachers are the foundation upon which effective schools and student achievement are built. CEPA researchers study the characteristics, training, and retention of quality teachers as well as the impact of teacher quality throughout a student’s lifetime in education, ranging from social development in early education to college graduation and beyond.

Thomas S. Dee

Jessalynn James

James Wyckoff

Elise Dizon-Ross

Susanna Loeb

Emily Penner

Jane Rochmes

Prashant Loyalka

Anna Popova

Zhaolei Shi

Sean Sylvia

Chengfang Liu

Yaojiang Shi

Matthew Ronfeldt

Kavita Kapadia Matsko

Hillary Greene Nolan

Michelle Reininger

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Demetra Kalogrides

Jason A. Grissom

Jessica Alzen

Ben Domingue

Melinda Adnot

Veronica Katz

Seth Gershenson

Benjamin Master

Camille Whitney

Pam Grossman

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Igor Chirikov

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Jamie Johnston

Yingquan Song

Xiaoting Huang

Scott Rozelle

Lindsay Fox

Allison Atteberry

Luke C. Miller

Jessica Chu

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Eric S. Taylor

Hamilton Lankford

Andrew McEachin

James Soland

Andrew Kwok

Chrishana M. Lloyda

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Maria Fitzpatrick

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Linxiu Zhang

Jianguo Wei

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Executive Summary

• Introduction: The policy and research context

Teacher quality matters. In fact, it is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement. Moreover, teacher compensation represents a significant public investment: in 2002 alone, the United States invested $192 billion in teacher pay and benefits. Given the size of this investment, there is remarkably little research to guide such critical decisions as whom to hire, retain, and promote. In the absence of a strong, robust, and deep body of research, the debate in this field is largely ideological.

This analysis reviews a wide range of empirical studies that examine the impact of teacher characteristics on teacher effectiveness in order to draw conclusions about the extent to which these characteristics are, in fact, linked with teacher performance. Greater clarity on the empirical evidence can inform the wisdom of current practice, guide state efforts as they struggle with No Child Left Behind compliance regarding teacher quality, and provide direction for future teacher policy decisions. For example, developing an approach to policy that values different and multiple teacher characteristics based on the research evidence may prove promising. It is important to note that many personal characteristics important for a good teacher are not measured in the studies reviewed. The focus is on aspects of teacher background that can be translated into policy recommendations and incorporated into teaching practice.

The framework for this study includes five broad categories of measurable and policy-relevant indicators to organize the teacher characteristics assumed to reflect teacher quality. It is notable that findings for these characteristics frequently differ for teachers at the elementary school level and teachers at the high school level and that the body of research on the subject of teacher quality suggests that the context of teaching matters (e.g., differences in grade levels, subject areas, and student populations). A refined understanding of how teacher attributes affect their performance across these different teaching contexts can be helpful in determining the range of potentially effective policy options.

The highlights of the empirical evidence include:

Teacher experience • Several studies have found a positive effect of experience on teacher effectiveness; specifically, the “learning by doing” effect is most obvious in the early years of teaching.

Teacher preparation programs and degrees • Research suggests that the selectivity/prestige of the institution a teacher attended has a positive effect on student achievement, particularly at the secondary level. This may partially be a reflection of the cognitive ability of the teacher. • Evidence suggests that teachers who have earned advanced degrees have a positive impact on high school mathematics and science achievement when the degrees earned were in these subjects. • Evidence regarding the impact of advanced degrees at the elementary level is mixed.

Teacher certification • Research has demonstrated a positive effect of certified teachers on high school mathematics achievement when the certification is in mathematics. • Studies show little clear impact of emergency or alternative-route certification on student performance in either mathematics or science, as compared to teachers who acquire standard certification.

Teacher coursework • Teacher coursework in both the subject area taught and pedagogy contributes to positive education outcomes. • Pedagogical coursework seems to contribute to teacher effectiveness at all grade levels, particularly when coupled with content knowledge. • The importance of content coursework is most pronounced at the high school level. • While the studies on the field experience component of teacher education are not designed to reveal causal relationships, they suggest positive effects in terms of opportunity to learn the profession and reduced anxiety among new teachers.

Teachers’ own test scores • Tests that assess the literacy levels or verbal abilities of teachers have been shown to be associated with higher levels of student achievement. • Studies show the National Teachers Examination and other state-mandated tests of basic skills and/or teaching abilities are less consistent predictors of teacher performance.

Given that many dimensions of teacher characteristics matter—preparation in both pedagogic and subject content, credentials, experience, and test scores—the findings from the literature imply that there is no merit in large-scale elimination of all credentialing requirements. Nor are improvements in teacher quality likely to be realized through the status quo. Rather, teacher policies need to reflect the reality that teaching is a complex activity that is influenced by the many elements of teacher quality. Most of the research does not seek to capture interactions among the multiple dimensions of teacher quality, and as a result, there are major gaps in the research that still need to be explored. Nor does the research fully address evidence about teacher quality at the elementary and middle school levels, in subjects other than mathematics, or among different populations of students (such as high poverty, English language learners, or special education).

In opposition to those who propose to eliminate all requirements for entering the teaching profession, this analysis supports a judicious use of the research evidence on teacher characteristics and teacher effectiveness. The evidence indicates that neither an extreme centralized bureaucratization nor a complete deregulation of teacher requirements is a wise approach for improving teacher quality. What holds a great deal more promise is refining the policies and practices employed to build a qualified body of teachers in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools; for disadvantaged, special needs, and advantaged students; and for math, science, languages, English, social studies, and the arts.

Education policy makers and administrators would be well served by recognizing the complexity of the issue and adopting multiple measures along many dimensions to support existing teachers and to attract and hire new, highly qualified teachers. The research suggests that investing in teachers can make a difference in student achievement. In order to implement needed policies associated with staffing every classroom—even the most challenging ones—with high-quality teachers, substantial and targeted investments must first be made in both teacher quality and education research.

Introduction:

The policy and research context

Are qualified teachers really quality teachers? Likewise, are hiring and compensation policies that reward certain qualifications the equivalent of investing in teacher quality? Does hiring and retaining qualified teachers lead to improvements in student achievement? Researchers and policy makers agree that teacher quality is a pivotal policy issue in education reform, particularly given the proportion of education dollars devoted to teacher compensation coupled with the evidence that teachers are the most important school-related factor affecting student achievement. However, considerable disagreement surrounds what specific teacher attributes indicate quality and how to better invest resources to provide quality teachers for all students. This review examines empirical evidence on the relationship between teacher attributes and teacher effectiveness with the goal of informing federal, state, and local teacher policy.

The policy context

Education is the compilation and product of many and varied resources. Among these, teachers stand out as a key to realizing the high standards that are increasingly emphasized in schools and school systems across the country. Despite general agreement about the importance of high-quality teachers, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and the public have been unable to reach a consensus about what specific qualities and characteristics make a good teacher. Even more concerning is the array of policy statements regarding teacher preparation that have been set forth in the face of volumes of inconclusive and inconsistent evidence about what teacher attributes really contribute to desired educational outcomes. Policy makers are left with questions surrounding what counts as a quality teacher—information that could be valuable in guiding policies regarding whom to hire, whom to reward, and how best to distribute teachers across schools and classrooms. Answers to these questions have potentially important implications for the efficiency and equity of public education.

The intense interest in teacher policy is motivated by several compelling factors. One factor relates to the high proportion of educational dollars devoted to teacher compensation. The single largest category of educational spending is devoted to the purchase of teacher time. A substantial portion of the 1999-2000 national investment in public education, which totaled over $360 billion, was used to employ almost 2.9 million teachers to educate more than 46 million public elementary and secondary students (National Center for Education Statistics 2000). 1 Guthrie and Rothstein (1998) assert that teacher salaries account for at least 50% of typical school district expenditures. Further, in their analysis of spending in the New York City public school system, Speakman et al. (1996) found that over 41% of the total expenditures in this district were devoted to the salaries and benefits of instructional teachers. An additional 6% was spent on other instructional personnel such as substitutes and paraprofessionals. This high level of investment mirrors the general sentiment among policy makers, researchers, and the general public that teachers are perhaps the most valuable resource allocated to student education.

Further, the enhancement of teacher quality is likely to be quite costly. Increases in teacher salaries, incentives such as loan-forgiveness programs, heightened teacher preparation requirements, and other efforts to prepare, recruit, and retain high-quality teachers are all associated with substantial costs. These costs could be managed by targeting specific areas of need where teacher shortages are most pronounced, such as particular subject areas (e.g., mathematics and science), types of classrooms (e.g., special education), and geographic areas (e.g., urban settings). Nevertheless, a clear sense of which teacher attributes really lead to improved educational outcomes should guide these important investment decisions, particularly given the many competing policy options to enhance teacher quality, as well as other attractive education policy proposals. In a context of limited resources, difficult policy choices must be made, and solid evidence should be used to guide those decisions.

The willingness of policy makers and taxpayers to devote such a large proportion of education dollars to teachers highlights the undisputed importance of teachers in realizing educational goals. A number of researchers have argued that teacher quality is a powerful predictor of student performance. In her analysis of teacher preparation and student achievement across states, Darling-Hammond (2000) reports that “measures of teacher preparation and certification are by far the strongest correlates of student achievement in reading and mathematics, both before and after controlling for student poverty and language status.” She contends that measures of teacher quality are more strongly related to student achievement than other kinds of educational investments such as reduced class size, overall spending on education, and teacher salaries. 2

In contrast to the approach used by Darling-Hammond, which equates teacher quality with specific qualifications, Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain (1998) identify teacher quality in terms of student performance outcomes. 3 Their research identifies teacher quality as the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement. They conclude from their analysis of 400,000 students in 3,000 schools that, while school quality is an important determinant of student achievement, the most important predictor is teacher quality. In comparison, class size, teacher education, and teacher experience play a small role.

Hanushek (1992) estimates that the difference between having a good teacher and having a bad teacher can exceed one grade-level equivalent in annual achievement growth. Likewise, Sanders (1998) and Sanders and Rivers (1996) argue that the single most important factor affecting student achievement is teachers, and the effects of teachers on student achievement are both additive and cumulative. Further, they contend that lower achieving students are the most likely to benefit from increases in teacher effectiveness. Taken together, these multiple sources of evidence—however different in nature—all conclude that quality teachers are a critical determinant of student achievement. In the current policy climate of standards-based reform, these findings make a strong case for gaining a better understanding of what really accounts for these effects. In other words, what is teacher quality?

The resource-intensive nature of teachers coupled with the empirical evidence documenting the critical role of teacher quality in realizing student achievement implies that teacher policy is a promising avenue toward better realizing goals of efficiency, equity, and adequacy in public education. Indeed, recommendations for reforming the preparation of teachers have become commonplace in reports aimed at improving public education (Bush 1987). For instance, almost two decades ago in its call for improved teacher preparation, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983) stated that “teacher preparation programs are too heavily weighted with courses in educational methods at the expense of courses in subjects to be taught.” The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recommended that teacher education programs require a 3.0 grade point average for admission, and that teachers complete courses in an academic-core subject in four years before spending a fifth year learning about education (Boyer 1983). Likewise, the Holmes Group (1986) advised that all major universities with substantial enrollments of preservice teachers (i.e., those who are preparing to enter the teaching profe ssion but who are not yet classroom teachers) should adopt the four-year liberal arts baccalaureate as a prerequisite for acceptance into their teacher education programs. A decade later the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future proposed major changes in teacher preparation and licensure, recommending that authority over these matters be shifted from public officials to professional organizations (NCTAF 1996). 4

The recent federal education legislation, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), further underlines the importance of having a high-quality teacher in every classroom in every school. The Bush Administration’s proposal, which specifies what defines a “highly qualified” teacher, is based on the premise that teacher excellence is vital to realizing improved student achievement. 5 This legislation, along with typical hiring and compensation systems, assumes that years of teaching experience, teacher certification, engagement in certain types of coursework, and performance on standardized assessments are indicators of high-quality teachers. 6

The purpose of this analysis is to review existing empirical evidence to draw conclusions about the specific characteristics that are linked with teacher performance. Greater clarity on the empirical evidence regarding teacher quality can inform the wisdom of current practice, guide state efforts in the struggle with NCLB compliance regarding teachers, and provide direction for future teacher policy.

The research context

In the context of this intense activity surrounding teacher policy, it makes sense to turn to the existing evidence on which teacher attributes are related to teacher effectiveness in order to guide policy decisions about hiring, compensation, and distribution with respect to teachers. However, the literature on teacher quality and qualifications has typically been viewed as inconsistent and inconclusive. Much of this perception has been fueled by a set of analyses conducted by Eric Hanushek over the past two decades. In his meta-analysis of studies examining the impact of several key educational resources on student achievement, Hanushek (1981, 1986, 1996, 1997) concluded that there is no systematic relationship between educational inputs and student performance. For example, with respect to teacher characteristics, Hanushek (1997) identified 171 estimates related to the impact of “teacher education” on student performance. Of these, he reported that 9% were statistically significant and positive, 5% were statistically significant and negative, and 86% were statistically insignificant. In addition, Hanushek included 41 estimates of the impact of teacher test scores on student outcomes. Of these, 37% were statistically significant and positive, 10% were statistically significant and negative, and 54% were not statistically significant. Finally, of the 207 studies that estimate the effect of teacher experience, 29% of the estimates were statistically significant and positive, 5% were statistically significant and negative, and 66% were not statistically significant.

Hanushek’s conclusions that resources are not systematically related to outcomes has been hotly challenged by a number of other researchers with respect to his “vote-counting” methodology (Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald 1994a, 1994b; Greenwald, Hedges, and Laine 1996; Krueger 2002) and how he weighted (or didn’t weight) the studies (Krueger 2002). The work by Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald demonstrated that the use of more sophisticated meta-analytical techniques to analyze the same set of studies included in Hanushek’s review produced far more consistent and compelling findings regarding the effect of educational resources—including variables related to the quality and quantity of teachers—on student achievement. Krueger’s (2002) critique of Hanushek’s methodology centered on how the various studies were weighted in Hanushek’s analysis. Essentially, Hanushek labeled each estimate of an effect as a “study,” so that one article could have several estimates, or studies, that are factored into Hanushek’s count of positive, negative, or statistically insignificant (positive and negative) effects. Krueger argues that this approach weights the various studies by the number of different estimates of the effect of a particular variable they include. Further, he contends that studies that report negative or statistically insignificant findings are more likely to include more estimates than those that find statistically significant positive effects. Krueger’s re-analysis of the studies that Hanushek included on the effect of pupil-teacher ratio and the effect of per-pupil expenditures demonstrates that other approaches to weighting the studies lead to a more consistent and positive story about the effect of these resources on student achievement.

In addition to these criticisms, Hanushek’s analysis was limited to the education production function literature, i.e., studies examining how educational resources (inputs) are systematically transformed into educational outcomes (outputs). On one hand, this set of studies could be argued to be too inclusive in the sense that even those studies that simply included an educational resource as a control variable might be inappropriately considered (e.g., a study including both class size and per-pupil expenditures). On the other hand, the production function literature could be contested as too exclusive in the sense that other methodological approaches, particularly those that allow the researcher to focus on more refined measures of what teachers know and can do, can also make valuable contributions to what we know about the value of educational resources. In contrast to the work of Hanushek and others who have looked at specific subgroups of studies (see, for example, Mayer, Mullens, Moore, and Ralph 2000; Wayne and Youngs 2003; Whitehurst 2002), the literature review presented here represents an analysis of a wide variety of empirical studies examining the impact of teacher attributes on teacher performance.

The approach taken here is similar to that used by Wilson, Floden, and Ferrini-Mundy (2001) in their review of the research on teacher preparation conducted for the U.S. Department of Education. Empirical studies that conform to a variety of accepted methodological approaches and use a range of measures of teacher effectiveness are used to ascertain what existing evidence says about the relationship between teacher attributes and their performance. In addition, this approach pays close attention to a number of contextual factors (e.g., level of education, subject area, type of student) as a way of drawing conclusions across studies. Clearly, the context of teaching is important and may affect the impact of the teacher attributes considered in this analysis. In fact, when existing studies are considered as a whole (without breaking them down by contextual factors such as subject area or grade level), findings tend to be inconsistent across studies; context variables may help to explain the apparent inconsistency of the existing research. In other words, a particular teacher attribute (e.g., a subject-specific master’s degree) may be an important predictor of teacher effectiveness in some contexts (e.g., high school math), but may not matter at all or may even have a negative effect in other contexts (e.g., first-grade reading). This careful attention to the context of teaching, wherever possible, helps to tease out some effects that would otherwise go undetected in reviews that neglect to consider these factors. The goal of this study is to sort through the available evidence to draw conclusions about what matters, what has been studied but has not been shown to matter, and what has not been adequately studied.

In the face of such seemingly inco nsistent and inconclusive evidence, policy makers are side-stepping the research (or relying only on those studies that support their positions) to move forward with teacher policies, often without the benefit of research to guide their efforts. However, research can, and should, play a role in these decisions. For instance, numerous measures of what a teacher knows and can do have been routinely assumed to be important (at least as indicated through hiring strategies, salary schedules, and teacher reform agendas). However, questions continue to persist about what exactly a quality teacher is. In other words, what teacher characteristics have been found to predict teacher effectiveness? This is a fundamental question that must precede policy discussions concerning what kinds of teacher qualities and qualifications to promote in aspiring teachers, whom to recruit and hire, what factors to use in setting salary schedules, and how to distribute teachers across different types of schools and classrooms to achieve equity and adequacy goals. This analysis examines the existing empirical literature on the relationship between teacher attributes and their effectiveness with the goal of informing policy on investing in teacher quality.

The next chapter describes the methodology used to review the literature on the relationship between teacher characteristics and their performance, and the chapter that follows presents the findings from this literature review. The final chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for future research and policy.

1. The 1999-2000 NCES information is based on projected or preliminary data.

2. Of course, to the degree that reduced class sizes, overall educational spending, and teacher salaries are related to teacher quality, these can be viewed as investments in teacher quality, albeit indirect.

3. Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain (1998) identify teachers as a major determinant of student performance, but do not describe teacher quality in terms of specific qualifications and characteristics. They show strong, systematic differences in expected achievement gains related to different teachers using a variance-components model.

4. Some have challenged the degree to which research supports the recommendations made by NCFAF. See Ballou & Podgursky (1997 , 1999, 2000) and, for a rebuttal, Darling-Hammond (2000).

5. Some argue that the qualifications identified in the NCLB legislation are more reflective of a “minimally qualified teacher” than a “highly qualified teacher.”

6. In contrast to many of the policy recommendations for stricter teacher qualifications, the Abell Foundation has recently released a report calling for the elimination of statewide coursework and certification requirements for teachers in favor of more flexible professional requirements (Abell Foundation 2001). Likewise, Hess (2002) argues for the deregulation of teacher preparation.

Jennifer King Rice is the Economic Policy Institute Research Associate and an associate professor in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland.

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TEACHER EDUCATION AND TEACHER QUALITY

As we enter the twenty-first century, a variety of forces - calls for higher academic achievement for all children, demands for accountability of educational institutions and stakeholders, the recommendations of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, and new research findings demonstrating that teacher quality is the single most important school variable affecting student achievement - have focused public attention on teachers and the quality of instruction.

The urgency of recruiting and training quality teachers is underscored by demographics. Student enrollments are at an all-time high, at the same time that the teacher work force is aging, and large numbers of teachers are likely to retire in the next few years. Indeed, more than 220,000 new teachers must be hired nationwide each year in the foreseeable future, if the country is to meet the educational needs of an ever-burgeoning student population. These students, the most diverse ever in our nation's history, will be required to meet higher standards for student achievement than ever before. Schools in rural and urban settings struggle to hire qualified teachers to meet their needs, and even wealthier suburban schools have difficulty finding the science, mathematics and special education teachers they need. This burgeoning demand for new teachers and an increasing demand for high quality in the teacher workforce have put a spotlight on the preparation of teachers.

For more than half a century, researchers, policymakers and the education community have grappled with the problems that beset teacher recruitment and preparation - problems ranging from difficulty recruiting the ablest students to under-investment in teacher education, to lack of coordination between colleges of teacher education and the arts and sciences faculty, to inadequate pre-service time for teacher candidates to acquire the content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and clinical experience they need to be successful in the classroom. Despite these impediments, as well as constantly changing state requirements, education faculty at colleges and universities around the country have produced many thousands of capable teachers.

As the issue of teacher quality has attracted more attention, so, too, has it attracted various "solutions" for achieving that end. One thread of "reform," paradoxically, calls for weakening the professional schools that educate teachers through the deregulation or elimination of teacher training. Advocates of deregulation propose that federal funds set aside for training should be available to any program that trains teachers, not just schools of education, but also individual K-12 schools, private companies and non-profit groups should be eligible to use the funds for "on-the-job" training, or in other ways they deem worthy. A second approach to reform aims at improving, not eliminating, teacher education.

In our view, the best way to bring an adequate supply of well-trained teachers into the classroom is not by avoiding collegiate teacher education, but rather by strengthening it - by bringing higher quality, greater resources and much more coherence to the way higher education screens and prepares teacher candidates today - whether those candidates come through traditional four-year programs or alternative routes. Historically, that is the route other major professions have taken when the adequacy of their training programs was challenged. To that end, and in furtherance of the AFT's 1998 resolution on teacher quality, a task force of AFT K-12 and higher education leaders has spent more than a year conducting a study of issues related to teacher education.

The American Federation of Teachers believes we must go beyond the current contours of teacher education and strengthen teaching as a true profession. As former AFT president Albert Shanker (1996) observed:

To be considered a true profession, an occupation must have a distinct body of knowledge - acknowledged by practitioner and consumer alike - that undergirds the profession and forms the basis of delivering high-quality services to clients; define for itself the nature of training required of those who wish to enter the field; require rigorous training to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to practice the profession; control the standards for entry into the profession; … induct its members into the profession in a systematic and rigorous fashion; and have the respect of the larger society.

Finding of the K-16 Teacher Education Task Force

The preparation of teachers is routinely an undergraduate, four-year program of university courses that includes (1) course-taking in the liberal arts and sciences, (2) a major or minor in a liberal arts and sciences discipline and/or (3) teacher education, including a field experience in the schools. For candidates preparing to teach in elementary schools, knowledge of the subject matter is usually acquired through the initial liberal arts requirements. Candidates planning to teach in the high schools now typically major in the discipline they intend to teach. Programs vary regarding their expectations for candidates intending to teach in the middle grades. Some programs expect candidates to minor in two to four "core" subject areas (mathematics, science, history, English, the arts); others require a major in one discipline. In response to recommendations made by the Carnegie Forum and the Holmes Group, a number of teacher education programs have instituted a "fifth-year" model, expecting all candidates to complete a B.A. degree before progression into an intensive year of education courses and school-based clinical experiences.

In addition to the more traditional routes into teaching described above, since the late 1980s, states have been developing alternative routes for those individuals with college degrees who did not take the required education coursework but wish to teach. As of 1999, 40 states have alternatives to the traditional route into teaching. While alternative route teachers currently make up less than 5 percent of the current K-12 workforce, they represent a significantly larger percentage of the "new hires, never taught" population. The candidates for alternative certification tend to be older students (Institutions of Higher Education, 1999). They also appear to attract a larger percentage of men and minorities and more science and math majors than do traditional route programs (NCEI, 2000, NCES, 1997, Universal Almanac, 1996).

Feistritzer and Chester (2000) examined these alternative programs and found that they are highly variable in rigor and quality. Some programs require participants to have a baccalaureate degree and to pass licensing tests and screening interviews to enter the classroom. Others require just a baccalaureate degree, and still others in the face of shortages do not even require a college degree. Some are well-developed apprenticeships where alternative route candidates have an opportunity to acquire pedagogical content knowledge in structured programs while receiving on-the-job mentoring. Too often, however, little or no pedagogical training is provided, little or no mentoring support is made available. New, untrained "alternative route" teachers are given emergency licenses and left to sink or swim. Alternative certification programs must require teacher candidates to pass the necessary licensing tests, as well as provide serious pre-employment pedagogical training and intense supervision of initial teaching.

Entry Requirements to Teacher Education

In the traditional route, all students take liberal arts and science courses in their first two years of college. Many students take these courses at a community college and complete their studies at a four-year institution. The breadth and quality of this coursework is of crucial importance to prospective teachers, particularly for most elementary and many middle school teachers who receive a great deal of the content preparation in these required courses. In too many cases, however, the general liberal arts and sciences curriculum required for prospective teacher candidates in their first two years is neither sufficiently coherent nor sufficiently rigorous.

Students are generally admitted into the college's teacher education program at the end of the sophomore year. For many states and institutions of higher education, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) standard defines the minimum requirement for entry into the teacher education program: basic literacy as demonstrated by a proficiency test and a 2.5 grade-point average in coursework.

Knowledge of Academic Discipline

Today, despite the need for greater subject matter knowledge on the part of all teachers, only 38 states now require an academic major or its equivalent for prospective secondary teachers; and less than a dozen states require such a major for elementary school teachers. As a result, the vast majority of elementary teachers major in education rather than a discipline and about 20 percent of those candidates preparing to teach at the high school level major in education.

Content of Pedagogical Coursework

A central component of virtually every teacher education program is coursework in pedagogy and effective methods of teaching. But, in the absence of an agreed-upon pedagogical core, the course content that teacher candidates receive at different colleges, and even from different instructors at the same college, can vary tremendously - not just in nuance, but in essential content regarding teaching and learning. There is, in short, no body of knowledge the profession has determined that all teacher candidates need to know. It is vital that we identify what science tells us about how people learn in order to improve the teacher education curriculum.

Pre-Service Student Teaching

Although the content, quality and duration of pre-service student teaching varies greatly, almost without exception, every teacher preparation program requires, at a minimum, a 10-week student-teaching experience of all elementary, middle and high school teacher candidates.

While some colleges and the education faculty have developed excellent clinical training programs, such programs are not widely available, and serve only a small percent of teacher candidates nationwide. The clinical experiences should be characterized by a careful choice of school sites, supervisory faculty and cooperating teachers, as well as continual interchange among the professionals around the goals of the experience and the standards that must be met by students, The reality, however, is that most student teaching experiences fall far short of what is needed. Indeed, it is not surprising to learn that:

• The student teaching experience is too short to adequately prepare teacher candidates to assume full responsibility for a classroom.
• Schools where student teachers are placed are often selected because of their proximity to the campus or to students' homes or their willingness to participate, not on their academic reputations;
• The cooperating teachers who are responsible for mentoring the student teachers placed in their classrooms are frequently selected haphazardly by principals with little input from the university or the teachers in the schools regarding criteria;
• Cooperating teachers receive few or no incentives for working with student teachers, and they are not trained adequately, nor supported, by the school or university;
• Cooperating teachers' evaluations regarding the teacher candidate are often ignored or not requested;
• The supervisory faculty, often retired teachers and principals who are responsible for overseeing the student teacher placements, have low standing at the university and are often selected as a result of their availability and willingness to accept these low-paid assignments rather than their excellence as teachers and mentors;
• Supervisory faculty, like cooperating teachers, are often untrained and unsupported in their work with teacher candidates;
• Frequently, there is far too little coordination among university faculty, clinical supervisors and cooperating teachers concerning standards of good teaching and the requirements of a rigorous clinical experience.

There is, in short, a pervasive disconnect among the professionals responsible for the clinical training of prospective teachers.

Exit Criteria

To the extent that institutional exit criteria exist, they tend to revolve around state licensure requirements. In most states, those requirements include the completion of an approved teacher education program with a grade-point average of at least 2.5, practice teaching in a school setting and passing some kind of standardized licensure test.

The current state licensure exam system poses several serious problems for those concerned about the quality of teachers entering the classroom:

• First, the tests measure low-level knowledge and skills, not the candidate's command of college-level work.
• Second, cut scores for these tests are often very low and, on occasion, are waived even at that low level.
• Third, the diverse testing and coursework requirements for licensure across the states complicates the increasing mobility of teachers, making it difficult for prospective teachers to go where jobs are available. For example, high school English teachers trained in one state may find that they are not prepared to teach in an adjacent state because the testing or coursework requirements are different even though the job of "high school English teacher" may be the same in these different states.
• Fourth, in the face of teacher shortages, states and districts waive the weak testing requirements currently in place.

Induction Programs for Beginning Teachers

Graduation from a teacher education program - whether four or five years - cannot be considered the end of training for teachers. The demands of the pre-college degree - acquiring subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and clinical training - do not allow sufficient time for teacher candidates to develop the skills and experiences necessary for completely independent practice in their initial teaching assignments, including the skills necessary to work effectively with paraprofessionals and other education support staff. Nonetheless, after graduation most new teachers are assigned a class, often with the most hard-to-reach students, and left to "sink or swim" on their own. By contrast, other countries with high-achieving school systems induct new teachers into the profession through clinical, real-world training processes - following rigorous undergraduate academic preparation - by which inductees develop and perfect their teaching skills under the mentorship of more experienced and skilled colleagues.

A number of school districts, in some cases working in collaboration with university teacher education programs, are instituting internship programs for novice teachers. These programs ensure that new teachers have both a mentor who will assist them as they confront the hard realities of the classroom and a reduced teaching load. The reduced load allows time for professional development activities that include observing master teachers, interacting with colleagues about teaching and learning, and responding to the guidance offered by mentors who review their practice and recommend strategies to improve the quality of their classroom performance. Such programs have been instituted in Toledo, Berea, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, Ohio; New York City and Rochester, New York; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Poway, California. Research indicates higher levels of teacher retention in these instances.

While some education programs at colleges across the nation have taken significant and creative steps to reshape curricula and raise standards, most programs are still beset by problems, including:

• difficulty in recruiting the ablest students prompted in large part by low pay, poor working conditions, and lack of respect for the profession, as well as the low esteem in which teacher education courses are held at many universities;
• inadequate standards for entering and exiting teacher education programs;
• under-investment by the university in teacher education;
• poor coordination between teacher education and liberal arts faculty;
• little consensus about what should comprise the pedagogy curriculum;
• difficulty, within a four-year program, in finding enough time and the proper balance of coursework in liberal arts, pedagogy and a major in an academic discipline;
• lack of standards for clinical programs resulting in haphazard recruitment and training of supervising personnel, along with inadequate collaboration among the professionals concerning program goals, student oversight and assessment; and
• clinical experiences that often are too brief and do not require students to take sufficient responsibility for instruction.

Furthermore, alternative certification routes vary from full-fledged education programs with stringent entry criteria to non-existent entry criteria and unsupervised emergency placements. The teaching experiences for alternative route candidates often give these teachers too much responsibility without sufficient training and mentoring.

Given these findings , the American Federation of Teachers calls for an urgent national commitment to bring higher quality, greater resources and more coherence to the way higher education screens and prepares teacher education candidates. To that end, we make the following recommendations:

RESOLVED, that the AFT call on education and liberal arts and sciences faculty to establish core courses in the liberal arts and sciences that college freshmen and sophomores are required to take in order to be admitted into a teacher education program and on the presidents to support the faculty in this endeavor. These courses must provide broad exposure and a sound foundation in the range of subjects and information relevant to K-12 student standards; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call for raising entrance standards for teacher education programs by requiring a 2.75 grade-point average at the end of the sophomore year as an initial requirement, to be phased up to a 3.0 grade-point average; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call upon leaders in the profession to develop a national voluntary test - not imposed by the federal government - to be used by states or higher education institutions to select candidates who wish to enter teacher education. This test would require students to demonstrate college-level proficiency in the core subject areas of mathematics, science, English language arts and history/geography-social studies; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call upon the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education to articulate higher standards of subject-matter knowledge and academic performance required of students entering and graduating from teacher education, particularly as they relate to state standards for K-12 students. In addition, NCATE needs to spell out quality standards for student teaching and other clinical experiences that include criteria for who may be a cooperating teacher or supervisor, and what role the university plays in training and coordinating such personnel; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call upon all institutions of higher education to require an academic major in addition to pedagogical studies and general liberal arts coursework for all teacher candidates - elementary, middle and high school. For vocational or career and technical teachers, these majors must be grounded in sound academic preparation combined with high occupational and technical knowledge as well as effective pedagogical skills. The major must be sufficiently rigorous to enable teachers to deeply understand their content. It must also be comprehensive enough to prepare prospective teachers to help their students meet the new, more demanding K-12 education standards; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call for congressional funding to enable the teaching profession under the auspices of a respected body of scholars and educators - such as the National Academy of Sciences, the learned societies or a specially assembled body - to reach agreement on, and recommend that colleges adopt, a rigorous core curriculum in pedagogy, based on the best research into how students learn and on those content-specific teaching methods shown to be effective with students; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call for strengthening the clinical experience of traditional teacher preparation programs by building on successful models. These models include the following characteristics:

• The cooperating classroom teachers with whom prospective teachers are placed are chosen on the basis of excellence determined by a peer review process, adequately trained to assume this responsibility, and well rewarded for undertaking it;
• Education faculty are freed to spend more time with their students at their school placement sites and receive professional advancement and other rewards for doing so;
• Supervisory faculty members - the faculty members who serve as the prospective teachers' principal link between the college campus and the K-12 classroom - are chosen on the basis of excellence in teaching and adult learning and adequately compensated for their work;
• These three sets of professionals work together from the beginning to the end of the clinical experience to develop explicit goals for the process and assess the performance of prospective teachers; and

RESOLVED, that teacher preparation should be organized, at a minimum, as a five-year process. This may take the form of a five-year university program, during which the students have opportunities early in pre-service training to observe and work in schools and in the fifth year, prior to graduation, receive an intensive clinical training internship - conducted in close collaboration with the public schools - for which they are compensated. If the university program is only four years, it is essential that the school district institute, at a minimum, a year-long internship and mentoring program for new teachers; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT believes the clinical experience can best be provided in public schools where the faculty embraces the mission of preparing new teachers, has allocated resources to that mission and has developed a professional culture that supports it; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call on the teaching profession under the auspices of a respected body of scholars and educators - such as the National Academy of Sciences, the learned societies, or a specially assembled body - to develop challenging subject matter content and pedagogy (as defined by the aforementioned panel), national examinations - not imposed by the federal government - to be taken by all prospective teachers prior to licensure in their teaching field. Current state teacher testing requirements vary greatly and often are characterized by low-level content and low cut-off scores. The national examinations would aim for a level of rigor that is consistent with what entry-level teachers in other high-performing countries are expected to know; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call for an induction program for all beginning teachers regardless of whether they have completed a four- or a five-year program. The AFT will work with school administrators and, through collective bargaining agreements, implement induction programs for novice teachers that include: a quality selection process for identifying and training mentor teachers, adequate training and compensation for those mentors, and time for them to genuinely teach and support beginning teachers; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call for alternative routes to teaching that, at a minimum, require all students to pass state teacher testing exams in the appropriate content areas and that offer pedagogical coursework, monitor alternative-candidate performance in the classroom, and provide necessary services to support the development of effective teaching skills and strategies; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call upon university presidents to make the preparation of high-quality teachers a top institutional priority. This should be reflected in funding for teacher education commensurate with other professional training, in greater support for clinical experience programs, in strengthening relationships between the arts and sciences and education faculty, and in realigning the faculty reward structure to encourage greater involvement of faculty with their schools and community; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call on K-12 local unions to assume greater responsibility for the quality of the clinical experience by working with the district and the higher education institutions to identify and train members working in K-12 classrooms with the expertise to serve as cooperating teachers; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call on higher education unions to use their good offices to strengthen teacher education, to promote greater communication and coordination between teacher education and other faculty, to ensure contractually that the institutional reward system favors clinical work in the schools, and to encourage the hiring of excellent clinical faculty and cooperating teachers; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT call upon state legislatures, Congress and foundations to appropriate the funds necessary to put into place the reforms mentioned above so as to enable excellent teacher education to become the norm, not the exception.

Please note that a newer resolution, or portion of a resolution, may have superseded an earlier resolution on the same subject. As a result, with the exception of resolutions adopted at our most recent AFT convention, resolutions do not necessarily reflect current AFT policies.

• State Policy
• Teachers and Teaching
• The Journal
• Vol. 16, No. 2

In Schools, Teacher Quality Matters Most

Dan Goldhaber

This article is part of a new Education Next series commemorating the 50th anniversary of James S. Coleman’s groundbreaking report , “Equality of Educational Opportunity.” The full series will appear in the Spring 2016 issue of Education Next .

What the Report Didn’t Say

The Coleman Report focused on differences in schooling resources available to white and minority students and on the degree of racial segregation in America’s public schools. It was also the first major, large-scale study to try to document the influence of schooling resources on student achievement, and how the influence of schooling resources compares to the influence of student background and socioeconomic status. This comparison resulted in the oft-cited finding that “schools don’t matter.” Interestingly, that quote does not appear in the Coleman Report, yet it is widely interpreted as a central conclusion. The actual text is far more nuanced, suggesting that

schools are remarkably similar in the way they relate to the achievement of their pupils when the socioeconomic background of students is taken into account.… When these factors are statistically controlled…it appears that differences between schools account for only a small fraction of differences in pupil achievement.

The phrases “small fraction” and “between schools” are important. The finding that differences between schools only explain a small fraction of the variation in student achievement does not suggest that policymakers wishing to improve the lives of students are necessarily hamstrung. That differences in resources do not explain a large share of the differences in test scores between white and minority students (the report focused on African American students) does not necessarily mean those resources do not affect student achievement. Not only do we now know more definitively that the quality of schools and teachers do matter, but also, importantly, these are resources over which policymakers have direct control (at least more so than socioeconomic status). And the fact that the Coleman findings are based on differences between schools means that it ignores important differences in resources—teacher quality in particular—that we know today exist within schools.

What Did Coleman Say about Schooling and Teacher Quality?

Beyond the headline finding about the impact of schooling overall, the report contains a fair amount of nuance on which school characteristics do (and, importantly, which do not) predict student achievement. The primary analytical technique used involved assessing the proportion of the variation in student achievement explained by different factors. Across grades and different student subgroups, the Coleman study found that most of the variation in student achievement is within rather than between schools, but a larger share of the variation is found between schools in earlier grades and among more disadvantaged subgroups. Regarding teacher quality specifically, one of the key conclusions is that

the quality of teachers shows a stronger relationship [than school facilities and curricula] to pupil achievement. Furthermore, it is progressively greater at higher grades, indicating a cumulative impact of the qualities of teachers in a school on the pupil’s achievements. Again, teacher quality seems more important to minority achievement than to that of the majority.

The finding that “teacher quality is one of the few school characteristics that significantly affects student performance” is quite consistent with more-recent research. Also in line with current studies is the report’s finding that “for any groups whether minority or not, the effect of good teachers is greatest upon the children who suffer most educational disadvantage in their background, and that a given investment in upgrading teacher quality will have most effect on achievement in underprivileged areas.” Recent studies, for instance, find that higher funding levels, smaller classes, and more-qualified teachers all have larger effects on disadvantaged students than on other students.

What characteristics of teachers are predictive of student achievement? The report includes various caveats about the findings, including that “many characteristics of teachers were not measured in this survey; therefore, the results are not at all conclusive regarding the specific characteristics of teachers that are most important.” But of the characteristics and attitudinal factors that were measured, “those that bear the highest relationship to pupil achievement are first, the teacher’s score on the verbal skills test, and then his educational background—both his own level of education and that of his parents.” Also measured were teaching experience (in years), professional journals read, and teachers’ perceptions of the ability and effort levels of their students.

The finding that teachers’ verbal skills appear to be predictive of student achievement is consistent with later reviews of the factors predicting student achievement and with evidence from the last decade showing that teachers’ licensure test scores are also predictive of achievement. There is far less evidence from research today that teachers’ educational background (having a master’s degree in particular) matters for students. One possibility is that teacher degree level was more predictive of teacher quality in the 1960s than it is today. School systems today are not very discriminating when it comes to crediting teachers with a master’s degree (with a substantial pay bump). Most reward the degree regardless of the focus of the master’s work—it is often unrelated to the teacher’s classroom assignment—and pay no attention to the quality of the institution granting the degree. Moreover, a far lower proportion of the teacher workforce had an advanced degree in the 1960s; obtaining such a degree may have been more likely to reflect the quality of those teachers who pursued this credential.

One finding from the Coleman Report that is rarely mentioned relates to the structure of the teacher labor market. The data collection for the Coleman Report included several questions about where teachers in a school grew up and went to high school and college. As is the case today, “In the Nation, there is considerable evidence that [minority students] are more likely to be taught by teachers who are locality-based, in the sense that they are products of the area in which they teach and that they secured their public school training nearby.” This finding reflects what is now popularly known as the “draw of home” in the teacher labor market. Like much in the world of education, this aspect of the teacher labor market appears not to be very different today than 50 years ago.

The Coleman et al. study has been subject to a number of critiques, including, for example, that the cross-sectional nature of the data used did not support causal claims about schooling effects, and that the percentage of variance explained by different subgroups of variables are sensitive to the order in which these are entered into statistical models. It is worth noting that the report itself addresses many of the issues brought up by critics. For instance, it reports the findings on the proportion of explained variation associated with entering explanatory variables in different order and notes the possibility that

school effects were not evident because no measurement of educational growth was carried out. Had it been, then some schools might have shown much greater growth rates of students than would others and these rates might have been highly correlated with school characteristics.

My interpretation of the Coleman Report findings is consistent with the reanalysis and reinterpretation by scholars in the early 1970s: in short, the findings hold up remarkably well.

What Have We Learned since Coleman about Teacher Quality?

Some of the acknowledged limitations of the data used in the Coleman study—the need to focus on the relationship between teacher variables averaged to the school level and student achievement, in particular—have been addressed by more-recent research. Specifically, the Coleman study was unable to explore the extent to which teacher quality varies within schools or estimate how much of the impact of individual teachers might be related to teacher attributes not associated with those school-level variables. Researchers today have the benefit of longitudinal data sets that link individual teachers and students over time. This allows for the use of statistical models to estimate the total contribution—that attributable to both observable and unobserved teacher attributes—of teachers toward student test-score gains (often referred to as “value added”). Although these models are controversial, the weight of the evidence suggests that they produce valid estimates of teachers’ contributions to student learning.

The importance of being able to estimate the value added of teachers for both policy and research cannot be overstated. Admittedly, many observable teacher characteristics—
gender, age, an advanced degree, or even state certification of competence—are not ordinarily found to be associated with effectiveness in the classroom. Yet qualities less easily (or commonly) quantified appear to matter a great deal, as the differences between individual teachers have been found to have profound effects. Not surprisingly, teachers who are successful with students in one year tend to be successful in other years; hence, measures of a teacher’s performance in the past tend to be a good predictor of how well future students assigned to that teacher will achieve. And recent studies that consider within-school differences in teacher effectiveness show just how important teachers are (see Figure 1). For instance, the median finding across 10 studies of teacher effectiveness estimates that a teacher who is one standard deviation above the average in terms of quality produces additional learning gains for students of 0.12 standard deviations in reading and 0.14 standard deviations in math. These within-school differences likely understate the overall import of teacher effectiveness because, as recent evidence suggests, there are also differences in teacher quality across schools. Despite this, the impact of having an effective teacher (one at the 85th percentile) in a particular school versus having an average teacher (one at the 50th percentile) is several times larger than the differences we typically observe between a novice and third-year teacher.

Finally, although the lion’s share of teacher-quality research since the Coleman Report has focused on the connections between teacher quality and student test scores, new evidence is shining a light on the extent to which teachers affect other long-term non-test student outcomes as well. Important work by Stanford University researcher Raj Chetty and his colleagues finds that value-added measures of teacher quality predict students’ outcomes long into the future. Students assigned to high-value-added teachers are more likely to graduate from high school, go to college, be employed, and earn higher wages (see Figure 2). This has profound implications: Chetty and colleagues estimate that replacing a teacher whose value added is in the bottom 5 percent of the distribution with an average teacher would increase the present discounted value of students’ lifetime income by more than $250,000 for a typical class (of 
28 students).

Coleman and Policy Debates Today

Have the last 50 years of education research led us to fundamentally different conclusions about the impact of teachers on the educational achievement of students? There is a bit more nuance to the answer than “not really,” but “not really” comes awfully close to hitting the mark. If anything, the half century of research on student achievement has strengthened arguments for a policy focus on teacher quality. More-sophisticated research has been conducted over the last two decades, since states began collecting longitudinal data that connect teachers and students. This work shows both how different teachers are from one another, in ways not readily captured by their qualifications, and how important these differences are for student achievement and long-term outcomes.

Those who buy the notion that the Coleman Report basically got it right might ask why we have not made more progress in improving the quality of the teacher workforce (or schools more generally). Certainly, one part of the problem is that, 50 years later, we are still debating the extent to which education policy ought to focus on teacher quality, and on the performance of individual teachers in particular. The research showing the important variation in teacher quality within schools and its connection not only to test scores but also to other important outcomes ought to strengthen arguments for teacher-oriented policy interventions. But it is precisely the focus on teacher evaluation—and whether it is connected to student test scores—that is at the center of the most hotly contested education policy debates.

Recent revisions to the most prominent federal law dealing with school quality—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—mark a sharp rollback of the federal role in teacher evaluation and accountability. It is not clear whether states and localities will consequently focus less attention on teacher quality, but if this is the outcome, policymakers will have failed to internalize the important lesson of both the Coleman Report and subsequent research: the main way that schools affect student outcomes is through the quality of their teachers.

Dan Goldhaber is director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at American Institutes for Research and director of the Center for Education Data and Research at the University of Washington.

This article appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of Education Next . Suggested citation format:

Goldhaber, D. (2016). In Schools, Teacher Quality Matters Most: Today’s research reinforces Coleman’s findings . Education Next , 16(2), 56-62.

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Relation of Student Achievement to the Quality of Their Teachers and Instructional Quality

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• Rolf Vegar Olsen 5 &
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This chapter examines how crucial input and process characteristics of schooling are related to cognitive student outcomes. It was hypothesized that teacher quality predicts instructional quality and student achievement, and that instructional quality in turn predicts student achievement. The strengths of these relations may vary across countries, making it impossible to draw universal conclusions. However, similar relational patterns could be evident within regions of the world. These hypotheses were investigated by applying multi-level structural equation modeling to grade four student and teacher data from TIMSS 2011. The sample included 205,515 students from 47 countries nested in 10,059 classrooms. Results revealed that teacher quality was significantly related to instructional quality and student achievement, whereas student achievement was not well predicted by instructional quality. Certain characteristics were more strongly related to each other in some world regions than in others, indicating regional patterns. Participation in professional development activities and teachers’ sense of preparedness were, on average, the strongest predictors of instructional quality across all countries. Professional development was of particular relevance in Europe and Western Asian/Arabian countries, whereas preparedness played an important role in instructional quality in South-East Asia and Latin America. The ISCED level of teacher education was on average the strongest predictor of student achievement across all countries; this characteristic mattered most in the Western Asia/Arabia region.

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• Instructional quality
• Teacher quality
• Student achievement
• Two-level structural equation modeling mediation models
• Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011

2.1 Rationale

The framework of the TIMSS study describes policy malleable features at the system, school, classroom and student level that are known to influence selected desired outcomes of education, such as achievement in the core curricular domain of mathematics (Mullis et al. 2009 ). Without going into details of the multi-stage sampling procedure applied in TIMSS, a distinguishing feature is that it produces a sample of intact classrooms, including their mathematics teacher(s), representing the 4th grade students in the participating countries (Joncas and Foy 2012 ). In other words, the data set from TIMSS provides a unique opportunity to link responses from students in a classroom with those from their teacher(s) for a large number of world regions, educational cultures and systems (in the following also called “countries”).

It is well known from previous research that classroom matters. First and foremost, teachers matter (for a summary of the state of research see, for example, Kyriakides et al. 2009 ). Teachers’ experience, teacher education background, beliefs and motivations, as well as their content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and general pedagogical knowledge (actual and perceived), are characteristics that, to varying degrees, have been shown to have effects on student outcomes. Secondly, teaching or instruction matters for student outcomes (for a summary of research see, for example, Seidel and Shavelson 2007 ). Educational effectiveness studies and qualitatively oriented classroom observational studies seem to converge on some key features of high quality instruction. In short, high quality teaching consists of instructional practices leading to students being dedicated to cognitively active time on task.

However, there are not many studies seeking to model how teacher quality is related to student achievement, and how teacher quality is put into action by what teachers actually do in the classrooms. This research gap applies particularly to international comparative research. Most of the reported studies of these relationships, although valuable (for example Baumert et al. 2010 ), took place in one country only, and usually in a Western country. Comparative research that tries to extend the findings from these studies to other educational cultures and systems is lacking. The generalizability of the findings is therefore an open question.

From most definitions of learning it follows that learning occurs as a result of an interaction between the individual learner and his or her surroundings. In the school setting these are, such interactions that most often are generally planned and staged by the teacher. Teacher quality should thus matter, but the degree of its influence may vary by depending on teacher quality indicators or among educational systems. Furthermore, although some aspects of teacher quality have been shown to be directly positively related to student outcomes, they are also resources for the instructional processes in classrooms, and hence teacher quality may be a predictor of instructional quality. As pointed out above, we know for instance that stronger pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics teachers (one possible indicator of teacher quality) is positively related to student achievement in mathematics (Baumert et al. 2010 ). This may be a direct effect, where teachers influence individual students by diagnosing their (mis)conceptions and addressing these directly, or it may influence the teachers to create classroom conditions for learning where students are cognitively challenged and activated.

In line with this reasoning, we hypothesized that teacher quality is partly mediated by instructional quality. Although the capacity of TIMSS to address this issue is limited because of its design and instruments, the study has collected a lot of information from the teachers about their background and dispositions. The study has also collected rudimentary information, from both the teachers and the students, about the degree to which the classroom is characterized by instructional activities known from other research to be beneficial for student learning.

Against this background, the following research questions led this study:

Which teacher characteristics are significantly related to instructional quality?

To what extent do the relations between teacher quality and instructional quality vary by country? Is it possible to identify regions or clusters of countries where similar relational patterns exist?

Is instructional quality significantly related to student achievement? Does this relation vary by country, and, does a pattern exist that applies to countries from larger regions or cultures?

If teacher quality is significantly related to instructional quality and if instructional quality is significantly related to achievement, does instructional quality partially mediate the relation between teacher quality and student outcomes?

2.2.1 Educational Effectiveness Research as the Point of Reference

The studies presented in this book are rooted in the tradition of educational effectiveness research (Sammons 2009 ; Scheerens and Bosker 1997 ). The analysis in this chapter seeks to establish the structural relationship between aspects of teacher quality, instructional quality and student outcome with the hypotheses that teacher quality matters significantly positively for instructional quality and student outcomes, that instructional quality matters significantly positively for student outcomes, and that instructional quality partly mediates the influence of teacher quality on student outcomes. Several models for effective schools have been proposed, all of which to some degree include teacher quality and instructional quality. Our model employed a section of the dynamic model proposed by Creemers and Kyriakides ( 2008 ). However, this is a “static” model used to analyze cross-sectional data, and thus should accordingly be seen as a pragmatic conceptualization of the relationship between these core concepts of teaching and learning, reflecting the design and data available from the TIMSS study.

Educational effectiveness research (Nordenbo et al. 2008 ; Scheerens 2013 ) relates to an explicit notion of input-process-output logic, usually represented by regression models, where an educational outcome, in our case grade four students’ mathematics achievement, is modelled as a function of one or more independent variables, in our case teacher quality and instructional quality. In most of these models one or more intervening concepts are included, in our case instructional quality, to conceptually relate the modelled variables. In other words, this is empirical research that tries to open up the educational system as a “black-box”, where the input is the amount of resources, conditions or other antecedents hypothesized to be related to variation in the outcome. The complexities of studying the degree to which possible inputs affect an outcome involves variables that relate to one or more of the levels in the education system. TIMSS is designed to provide data where these complexities are represented by data at both the student and the class/teacher level.

Scheerens ( 2013 , pp. 10–12) suggested that the lack of a unifying theoretical model for school research may well reflect that “[t]he complexity of educational ‘production’ may be such that different units and levels are addressed by different theories,” and he concluded his systematic review of the theoretical underpinning of educational effectiveness research by stating “[a]s it comes to furthering educational effectiveness research, the piecemeal improvement of conceptual maps and multilevel structural equation models may be at least as important as a continued effort to make studies more theory driven.” This chapter and the other chapters in this book are intended to provide improvements in the conceptual understanding of what characterizes effective instructional practice. By the inclusion of multiple educational systems, these chapters will also contribute to address questions regarding the degree to which educational effectiveness research can provide models and theories which are sensitive also to the wider social, political and cultural context in which education is embedded.

2.2.2 Teacher Quality

Teacher quality (TQ) includes different indicators of teacher qualifications, in particular characteristics of teachers’ educational background, amount of experience in teaching, and participation in professional development (PD), as well as personality characteristics such as teachers’ self-efficacy. A number of previous studies were able to relate measures of such teacher characteristics to student educational outcomes (see for instance the review by Wayne and Youngs 2003 ).

Evidence suggests that the quality of teacher education does have an impact on teachers’ educational outcomes in terms of teacher knowledge and skills (Blömeke et al. 2012 ; Boyd et al. 2009 ; Tatto et al. 2012 ); these, in turn, are significantly related to instructional quality and student achievement (Baumert et al. 2010 ; Hill et al. 2005 ; Kersting et al. 2012 ). The degree and major academic disciplines studied can be regarded as indicators of teachers’ education, although they are only rough approximations of specific opportunities to learn. In the case of mathematics teachers, a major in mathematics delivers the body of content knowledge necessary to present mathematics to learners in a meaningful way and to connect mathematical ideas and topics to one another, as well as to the learner’s prior knowledge and future learning objectives (Wilson et al. 2001 ; Cochran-Smith and Zeichner 2005 ). However, knowing the content provides only a foundation for teaching; student achievement is higher if a strong subject-matter background is combined with strong educational credentials (Clotfelter et al. 2007 ). Correspondingly, teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge of mathematics are of great importance for instructional quality and student achievement in mathematics, with the former exerting a greater effect than the latter (Baumert et al. 2010 ; Blömeke and Delaney 2012 ). Whether teachers had an education where mathematics or mathematics education were a major focus and the type of degree are proxy variables available in TIMSS. This makes it possible to study how teachers’ educational background may affect teaching and students’ achievement across countries.

An almost universal characteristic seems to be that teachers do not feel sufficiently prepared for their complex tasks, in particular during the first years on the job (Kee 2012 ). TIMSS developed three constructs reflecting teachers’ preparedness to teach numbers, geometry and data, respectively. The constructs were developed within the context of Bandura’s social-cognitive theory, and the measures of teachers’ preparedness for teaching may reasonably be assumed to reflect a concept which is similar to teacher self-efficacy (Bandura 1986 ; Pajares 1996 ). Self-efficacy beliefs influence thought patterns and emotions, which in turn enable or inhibit actions. Teachers with strong self-efficacy are typically more persistent and make stronger efforts to overcome classroom challenges than others (Tschannen-Moran et al. 1998 ). TIMSS provides data about teachers’ sense of preparedness so that the relation of this dimension of self-efficacy can be examined across countries.

In almost all countries, a variety of professional development activities exist, from very short classes to comprehensive programs (Goldsmith et al. 2014 ; Guskey 2000 ). These include school-based programs, and coaching, seminars, or other types of out- and in-service training with the aim of supporting the development of teacher competencies. Overall, meta-analyses support the hypothesis that professional development is positively related to instructional quality and student achievement if the activities meet certain quality characteristics (Timperley et al. 2007 ). Desimone ( 2011 ) classified these quality features into a focus on content, active learning, coherence, and a certain minimum length of the professional development course to be sustainable and collaborative activities. Collaboration in terms of joint work on cases and practicing under supervision of colleagues seems to be particularly relevant (Boyle et al. 2005 ). Discussions, reflection and continuous feedback seem to stimulate real changes in beliefs and routines (Goldsmith et al. 2014 ). TIMSS included several scales that assessed both teachers’ participation in formal professional development activities and their involvement in continuous and collaborative professional development activities with colleagues in the school.

2.2.3 Instructional Quality

Several studies have established a relationship between measures of instructional quality (InQua) and student achievement, student motivation or other outcomes of schooling. Even though the concept of instructional quality is understood differently by different researchers in the field of educational effectiveness research, there is agreement that it is a multidimensional construct (Baumert et al. 2010 ; Creemers and Kyriakides 2008 ). Besides classroom management, three instructional characteristics, namely cognitive activation, clarity of instruction, and a supportive climate, are regarded as essential features (Rakoczy et al. 2010 ; Decristan et al. 2015 ). TIMSS includes several measures relating to different aspects of instructional quality, with responses both from teachers and students. For more about the theoretical framework of this construct see Chap. 1 .

2.2.4 Universal, Cultural or Country-Specific Models?

National specifications of degrees and licenses, foci of programs in terms of majors, amount of in-service training and length and level of teacher education reflect partly overlapping and partly differing visions of the knowledge and skills that teachers are expected to have in a country (Schwille et al. 2013 ). These specifications of what is required of mathematics teachers before they are allowed to teach mathematics to students at grade four can be assumed to be intentionally developed by national educational policy makers and teacher education institutions (Stark and Lattuca 1997 ). The same applies to professional development activities provided to teachers or to characteristics regarded as high quality teaching in a country.

In his study of primary school education in England, France, India, Russia, and the United States, Alexander ( 2001 ) illustrated the subtle and long-term relationship between culture and pedagogy. Based on videotaped lessons and interviews with teachers, he demonstrated that opportunities to learn provided during schooling reflected a country’s educational philosophy transmitted and meditated through the classroom talk between teachers and students. Leung ( 2006 ) confirmed similar cultural differences, specifically with respect to mathematics education in the East and the West. Although mathematics can be regarded as a fairly global construct (Bishop 2004 ), the curricula of school mathematics, as well as of mathematics teacher education, differ across countries, and are influenced by the context in which they are implemented (Blömeke and Kaiser 2012 ; Schmidt et al. 1997 ). With this as a backdrop, it is interesting that a study like TIMSS permits examination of the extent to which the relationship between teacher quality, instructional quality and student achievement can be generalized across the world, or across regions of the world.

2.2.5 Control Variables

Current research indicates that in some countries gender differences in students’ mathematics achievement still exist, but that these vary in their direction (Mullis et al. 2012 ). There is an even stronger relationship between students’ socioeconomic background and achievement (Mullis et al. 2012 ). In order to estimate the relation of teacher quality and instructional quality to mathematics achievement of students at grade four, the background characteristics of students need to be controlled for in the analysis.

2.3 Methods

2.3.1 sample.

This study is based on grade four student and teacher data from the majority of countries participating in TIMSS 2011. Five countries were excluded because there were no data on one or more predictors (Austria, Belgium, Kazakhstan and Russia) or there were very high levels of missing values for most of the variables included in the analysis (Australia). For students with more than one mathematics teacher, data from only one of the teachers was included at random, resulting in a data set with a simple hierarchical structure, where students were nested in one specific class with one specific teacher. The amount of data excluded by this procedure was negligibly small (for details see Chap. 1 ). The final sample included 205,515 students from 47 countries nested in 10,059 classrooms/teachers with an average classroom size of 20 students. Student sample sizes per country varied between 1423 and 11,228, with the number of classrooms/teachers ranging from 67 to 538, and an average classroom size between 12 and 34 students. The school level was neglected in the analyses to avoid overly complex hierarchical models. Furthermore, the choice of omitting the school level in the analysis is based on the fact that for many countries the classroom and school level cannot be analyzed separately, since only one grade four classroom was drawn per school.

2.3.2 Variables

A structural model was developed to reflect the hypothesized relations between teacher quality, instructional quality and student achievement (Fig.  2.1 ). Furthermore, the internationally-pooled descriptives of all variables, including their range across countries were inspected (Table  2.1 ). Footnote 1

Model of the hypothesized relations of teacher quality ( left hand side of the figure) in terms of years of teaching experience ( Years exp ), teacher education degree ( Degree ), major focus of teacher education ( Major ), professional development represented by three indicators ( PDmath , PDspec and Collabor ), and sense of preparedness represented by three indicators ( PrepNumb , PrepGeo and PrepData ), to instructional quality ( InQuaCI , InQuaCA , and InQuaSC ), and to student achievement represented by five plausible values ( PV 1–5; right hand side of the figure); all abbreviations are explained in Table  2.1 , and the numbers linking the relations hypothesized correspond to columns in Table  2.2 , where the actual estimates can be found

Teacher quality measures

Teacher quality is represented by three central dimensions in our model, namely teacher education background, participation in professional development (PD) activities, and teachers’ sense of preparedness. Teacher education background is described by teachers’ years of experience and their formal initial education. These characteristics were included as separate categorical and manifest variables because they do not reflect a joint and theoretically derived latent construct. Instead they represent different and not necessarily related dimensions of teacher quality.

The variation between countries for these variables was remarkably large. Across all countries, the modal category of number of years of experience (“By the end of this school year, how many years will you have been teaching altogether?”) was more than 20 years. The Eastern European countries were particularly pronounced in having many teachers with extensive teaching experience, indicating an older teaching force than elsewhere (see Appendix A, Table A.1). But there were also countries in the data set where the largest group of teachers that taught mathematics at grade four had less than 10 years of experience, and, in some countries, less than 5 years of experience. The Arabian countries were most pronounced in having a relatively young teaching force.

Teachers provided information about their degree from teacher education (“What is the highest level of formal education you have completed?”) out of six options from “did not complete ISCED level 3” to “finished ISCED level 5A, second degree or higher”. Across all countries, the modal category was “ISCED level 5A, first degree”, indicating that many countries had a large proportion of teachers with a bachelor degree. But there were also some countries where the largest group of teachers did not have university degrees, but had completed practically-based programs at ISCED level 3. Italy and the African countries were most pronounced in this respect (see Appendix A, Table A.2). In contrast, there were countries where the largest group of teachers held a university degree at least equivalent to a master degree (“ISCED level 5A, second degree or higher”). The Eastern European countries were most pronounced in this respect.

A dichotomous variable was created by combining teachers’ responses to two questions regarding their specialization in mathematics. This variable identifies teachers with a major in mathematics or in mathematics education (“During your <post-secondary> education, what was your major or main area(s) of study?” and “If your major or main area of study was education, did you have a <specialization> in any of the following?”). On average, slightly fewer than 40 % of all teachers across all countries had a major with a specialization in mathematics. However, in some countries the proportion was below 10 % (for example in some of the Eastern European countries), whereas in other countries the proportion was more than 80 % (for example in several Arabian countries) (see Appendix A, Table A3).

Furthermore, there were measures of teachers’ participation in PD activities. One set of questions asked the teachers whether or not they had participated in PD during the last two years. These questions are represented in the model by two item parcels reflecting either broad PD activities covering, for example, “mathematics content” in general, or reflecting PD activities preparing for specific challenges, for example”integrating information technology into mathematics”. Across all countries, approximately 40 % of the teachers had participated in broad or specific PD activities, respectively. However, the between-country variation was large, from countries having as few as 10 % the teachers taking part in broad or specific PD, to countries where more than two-thirds of the teachers had taken part in one or both forms of PD activities. It is difficult to discern any systematic cultural pattern in these differences (see Appendix A, Table A.4).

In addition, there was a set of questions regarding whether teachers had taken part in collaborative activities representing continuous, collaborative and school-based PD (“How often do you have the following types of interactions with other teachers?”, with “Visit another classroom to learn more about teaching” as an “exemplary” form of interaction). Across all countries, teachers commonly participated in these types of activities two to three times each month. However, in some countries the largest group of teachers participated in collaborative PD daily or almost daily. These questions were included as the third item parcel defining the latent construct of PD. Footnote 2

The third teacher quality dimension included in the model reflects teachers’ self-efficacy. The indicator used was their self-reported sense of preparedness to teach specific topics in mathematics within the three domains of number, geometric shapes and measures, as well as data display (“How well prepared do you feel you are to teach the following mathematics topics?”, with “Adding and subtracting with decimals” included as an exemplary topic). For each domain, teachers were asked to rate these topics on a three-point Likert scale from “Not well prepared” (0) to “Very well prepared” (2). Teachers were also invited to use a “not applicable” response category if the topic was not covered in their curriculum. In our analysis, the items marked as not applicable were treated as missing. To simplify the final model, the three domains were represented as item-parcel indicators of the latent construct of preparedness. Across all countries, the mean of the three item parcels was each time around 1.8 and, thus, close to the maximum category of the Likert scale. This suggests that there was little discrimination evident in the items. The international variation was also more limited within this dimension than in others included in the model. The lowest means were around 1.5 and, thus, straddled the categories “Somewhat prepared” and “Very well prepared”. Interestingly, slightly lower self-efficacy was most evident in Japan and Thailand (see Appendix A, Table A.5).

Instructional quality measures

The measure of InQua applied in this chapter is based on the teacher questionnaire in TIMSS where six questions asked teachers to report how often they perform various activities in this class (“How often do you do the following in teaching this class?”). This measure was preferred over other measures available (see Sect.  2.5 ) since it has a more explicit relation to three of the four characteristics of high quality instruction (Table  2.1 ). Teachers were asked to rate these activities on a four-point Likert scale from “Never” (0) to “Every or almost every lesson” (3). These items are represented by three item parcels with two items in each parcel covering different aspects of the latent construct InQua. The first parcel reflected teaching characteristics that were intended to deepening students’ understanding through clear instruction (such as “Use questioning to elicit reasons and explanations”). The second parcel pursued this objective through cognitive activation (through questions such as “Relate the lesson to students’ daily lives”). The final parcel covered a supportive climate (for example “Praise students for good effort”). Across all countries, the indicators for a supportive climate appeared to be widely present, as the mean was close to the maximum of the scale. The mean of the other two parcels was slightly lower. Interestingly, Scandinavian countries had the lowest means on the cognitive-activation item-parcel (see Appendix A, Table A.6). Some international variation existed on all three item parcels.

Outcome measure

We selected student achievement in mathematics represented by five plausible values as our outcome measure. The scale was defined by setting the international mean to 500 and the standard deviation to 100. Country means varied between 248 and 606 points, which is a difference of more than 3.5 standard deviations (for more information, see Martin and Mullis 2012 ).

Control variables

Data about gender and socioeconomic background were gathered through students’ self-reports to the questions “Are you a girl or a boy?” and the frequently used proxy measure of home background “About how many books are there in your home?” Footnote 3

2.3.3 Analysis

The research questions were examined using multi-level structural equation modeling (MLSEM). The intra-class correlation (ICC) for students’ achievement in the pooled international data set (ICC = 0.30) and within countries (ICC = 0.07–0.56) were all above the threshold at which multi-level modeling is recommended (Snijders and Bosker 2012 ).

Item-parcels were used as indicators, as recommended when structural characteristics of the constructs are the focus of interest (Little et al. 2002 ), as applies in the present investigation, and when sample size is limited in comparison to the number of parameters to be estimated (Bandalos and Finney 2001 ). The latter also applies to the present investigation given that there are only about 140 to 260 classrooms in most of the countries. By using parcels as indicators for the latent variables, the number of free parameters to be estimated was significantly reduced. The items were combined into parcels based on theoretical expectations confirmed by initial exploratory analysis of sub-dimensions in the latent variables included in the model.

Data analysis was carried out using the software MPlus 7.4. The clustered data structure was taken into account by using a maximum-likelihood estimator with robust sandwich standard errors to protect against being too liberal (Muthén and Muthén 2008 – 2012 ). Missing data were handled by using the full-information-maximum-likelihood (FIML) procedure. The model fit was evaluated with the chi-square deviance and a range of fit indices. Footnote 4

Before the final model was run, measurement invariance (MI) across countries was tested for the latent constructs in the model. Comparing constructs and their relations across countries produces meaningful results only if the instruments measure the same construct in all countries (Van de Vijver and Leung 1997 ). In order to ascertain such equivalence, MI was established using multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA; Chen 2008 ). As instructional quality and the teacher constructs were measured at the classroom level, we tested for measurement invariance at the school level. Firstly, configural invariance was examined, which means that in each country the same items had to be associated with the same latent factors. As a second step, we tested for metric invariance, by studying whether the factor loadings were invariant across countries. Invariance of factor loadings enabled us to compare the relationship between latent variables across groups. It was possible to establish metric invariance for all latent constructs included in the present model (see Appendix B).

To examine our research questions, a single-group model was first applied before country-by-country analyses were carried out. In the multi-group model, factor loadings were constrained to be the same for all countries, reflecting the metric invariance criterion referred to above, in order to ensure comparability. Indirect relations at the between-level were estimated by multiplying the coefficients for the respective direct relation. In the single-group model, the two control variables gender and books at home were grand-mean centered on the international mean, whereas all predictors, the mediator InQua and the dependent variable student achievement in mathematics were group-mean centered on the country means. In the multi-group model the control variables were again grand-mean centered (this meant now on the country mean) whereas the predictors, the mediator and the dependent variable remained unaltered. Relations were regarded significant on the within-level if p  < 0.05, but given the relative small number of units at the between-level as compared to the number of parameters to be estimated, a more liberal decision rule for the significance testing with p  < 0.10 was applied for this level.

2.4 Results

2.4.1 model fit.

The fit of the pooled model to the full data set was very good; both with respect to relative and to absolute fit indices (see Table  2.2 ). Only the ratio of the chi-square deviance to the degrees of freedom was unsatisfactory which is commonly observed with large samples. Within countries, the model fit varied substantially but given the small sample sizes the fit was sufficient on most indices in the majority of countries. Only in nine out of the 47 countries more than two of the applied indices indicated an unsatisfactory model fit. Typically for these cases, the CFI and TLI estimates were below the threshold of 0.90 and the SRMR estimate on the between-level above the 0.08 criterion.

2.4.2 Relation Between Teacher Quality, Instructional Quality and Mathematics Achievement

The pooled model using the data from all countries reveals that participation in PD activities and teachers’ sense of preparedness were the strongest predictors of InQua (see Table  2.2 ), with relatively large effect sizes given that the directions of relations typically vary across countries. Effect sizes around β  = 0.20 may therefore be a first indication of a widely recognizable, if not universal, pattern. This is supported by the country-by-country results. In almost half of the countries PD activities (23 countries) and preparedness (22) were significantly related to InQua, with moderately strong effect sizes ( β  = 0.61 or β  = 0.50 respectively), all of which were uniformly positive. Whereas PD activities were related to InQua particularly in European (11 out of 18) and Western Asian/Arabian (7 out of 12) countries, teachers’ sense of preparedness was significantly associated with InQua in South-East Asia (4 out of 7), Latin America (2 out of 2) and the Scandinavian (4 out of 5) countries. The relevance of the predictor preparedness was also evident through its somewhat weaker, but still statistically significant relation to student achievement.

Another predictor that influenced InQua and students’ mathematics achievement was teachers’ experience. On average, across countries, students with higher mathematics achievement were taught by more experienced teachers, and teachers with more experience also reported higher instructional quality. However, for both of these relationships there were also significant effects in the opposite direction for a number of countries, which contradicts the hypothesized relationship.

Teachers’ level of education was not associated with InQua in the pooled data set, but a significant positive relationship was found in nine countries. However, students who were taught by teachers with relatively higher ISCED levels performed somewhat higher in the mathematics achievement test, and this positive relationship was also confirmed for twelve of the countries. This characteristic was most prominent in the Western Asia/Arabia-region, although with moderate effect sizes.

Whether a teacher education program had had a major focus on mathematics or mathematics education did not significantly predict InQua. Still, as with teacher education level, students in classrooms demonstrating stronger mathematics achievement were in the overall international analysis more often taught by a teacher who had majored in one of these fields. Within countries, these relationships were mostly insignificant, but we found also both moderate significant positive and negative coefficients in some countries (Table  2.3 ).

Across all countries, mathematics achievement of students at grade four was not predicted by InQua, and within countries the predictor had a significant relation to achievement in only three countries. As a result, the mediation effect of InQua was negligible and thus the hypothesized mediation effect of InQua on student achievement is not supported by the data included in this analysis.

The importance of controlling for students’ socioeconomic background was demonstrated by the strong relationship between the number of books at home and student achievement. In 39 out of the 47 countries, students who reported more books also had a higher mathematics score. This applied to all European, English-speaking and South-East Asian countries. In contrast, socioeconomic background was not significant in the African countries. Gender differences were evident in 28 countries, particularly in European (17 out of 18) and Latin America (2 out of 2) countries, and these differences unanimously favored boys. In contrast, Western Asian/Arabian (2 out of 12) and African (1 out of 3) countries were much less affected by gender inequalities, and when these were present in these countries, the differences favored girls.

2.5 Discussion

TIMSS data provide a unique opportunity to link student outcomes with teacher and instructional characteristics because they collect data from intact classrooms. The good fit of our model to the data within countries and across countries can be regarded as evidence that the model was well specified and that important teacher predictors of student achievement were selected. However, it seems to be important to distinguish between predictors that can be characterized as being more proximal or distal, respectively, to instructional quality or student achievement. Initial teacher education may have happened decades ago in case of experienced teachers, and programs may have been very different at that time compared to current teacher education programs (Wang et al. 2003 ). Teachers’ initial education is in this manner an example of a teacher characteristic which, at least for a large group of teachers, is distal to the other variables included in the model, and moreover, likely confounded with other omitted variables. Taken together this makes it difficult to identify a systematic relationship between features of mathematics teacher education and instructional quality or student achievement.

Professional development activities taken during the past 2 years and teachers’ self-efficacy are, in contrast, much more closely related to what happens currently in classrooms. The analysis presented demonstrates that teachers’ participation in PD activities and their self-efficacy are both significantly associated with grade four students’ mathematics achievement, both in the pooled international model and within a high number of countries. This finding therefore extends research-based knowledge by providing evidence for the generalizability of the influences of self-efficacy (Bandura 1986 ) and PD (Timperley et al. 2007 ) across widely different educational contexts.

However, for all other variables in the model, a large variation between the countries was observed and universal relationships with instructional quality and students’ achievement were generally not observed. Teachers teach in a context of structures, policies and expectations. Scheerens ( 2007 ) separated these conditions into entities that were more or less “given” antecedents (such as population characteristics or general valuation of education and teachers) and conditions that were more malleable by policy (such as level and type of decentralization or accountability arrangements). These differences in conditions may affect both the between-country and the within-country variability in teacher quality and instructional quality, and also the relationships between these concepts and students’ learning outcomes. The TEDS-M study showed that in some countries teacher education is nationally standardized, while in other systems teacher education can be highly decentralized (Ingvarson et al. 2013 ). Furthermore, in some countries, teachers are trusted by both the public and their employers, who grant them more or less full autonomy in how they implement the curriculum and the instruction. In other countries, teachers will be firmly placed in a hierarchical system, with less freedom to influence the curriculum and instruction, in the extreme case with prescribed and detailed lesson plans.

Correspondingly, for all variables of teacher quality included in this chapter, we observed a noticeably large variation across countries. One potential consequence of such variation is that, in systems where teachers are fully autonomous individuals with responsibility for developing and implementing instruction, a relatively large within-country variation in instructional quality is possible, while systems characterized by teachers being provided with more or less prescribed lesson plans would likely have fewer degrees of freedom for some of the components typically included in instructional quality. In our models, the observed differences in direct relations of several variables describing teacher quality to instructional quality may be a reflection of this wider “ecology” of teaching. Taken together, this variation illustrates how international studies may use systematic differences in conditions and policies for teaching in order to at least provide examples of how alternative policies work in other settings, although, of course, such interpretations should be done with care since the wider cultural context of education represents a range of potentially very influential omitted variables.

In relation to this, it is also worth discussing how the educational system caters for specialized or generalized teachers of mathematics at grade four. It is reasonable to assume that in more or less all countries teachers in secondary schools will have a specialization in one or a few subjects. However, in primary schools, at least in the first years, there will be a larger between-country variation in the degree to which teachers have a general versus a specialized teacher education. Teachers with general qualifications will by default have a broader background with less in depth subject knowledge. This is a variation at the system level, which to a large degree was observed for the two proxy measures of teachers’ educational background.

2.6 Limitations of the Study

One limitation of our study was its reliance on cross-sectional data. In order to study the effect of teacher and instructional quality on student achievement, and not the least, in order to study the possible mediation of teacher qualities by instructional quality, use of data from experimental or longitudinal designs would be preferred. Follow-up studies with improved designs are urgently needed. Since the international studies are repeated at regular intervals, it should be possible to have repeated measures at country level in later surveys.

However, this would imply measures remain unaltered, which we would not recommend given another limitation of our study; the unsatisfactory quality of some of the measures used. This is primarily an issue regarding the measure of instructional quality used in this analysis. This measure was based on items in the general part of the teacher questionnaire. Consequently, the questions did not include explicit references to the subject of mathematics. In several countries, a teacher of grade four mathematics will also be teaching the same class other subjects. It may be that some of the teachers responded to this list of questions without having mathematics instruction in mind, which may cause validity problems (Schlesinger and Jentsch 2016 ).

There were other related measures which could have been used, and which are used in the analyses in other chapters in this book. A set of questions in the mathematics specific part of the teacher questionnaire also asked teachers to report their instructional activities in mathematics. However, these questions reflect surface characteristics of teaching practices, and did not correspond to the theoretical framework of instructional quality applied in this book, which is based on current research on instructional quality. A measure based on students’ responses could also have been used. However, given the low age of the students in grade four, we opted to rely on the teachers’ reports. Improvements in the instructional quality measures to better include recent research in this area (in particular the work done by the Klieme group; see for example Decristan et al. 2015 ; Rakoczy et al. 2010 ) seem to be urgently needed.

A third feature of our analysis that may be regarded as a minor limitation is, given the limited sample size of teachers and classrooms in many countries, item parcels were applied instead of single items. This leads to some loss of information. Given that the reliability of most parcels was reasonably high, the grouping of items into parcels can be assumed to represent a minor reduction of information with only small consequences for the analysis. Footnote 5 However, given that there are potentially differential relationships between the three indicators and student achievement across countries and within countries, the research questions of this paper may also merit reinvestigation at the item- or indicator level.

There were other dimensions in the TIMSS questionnaire gauging teacher characteristics that were found to be of relevance for students’ achievement. These measures were omitted from this analysis for several reasons. Firstly, for some of them it was not possible to confirm metric measurement invariance (this applied, for example, to teacher motivation) and, secondly, their inclusion would have introduced a risk of multicollinearity. In addition, as a two-level multi-group analysis framework was applied, keeping the model simple was a necessary priority. It should be noted that the final choice of indicators of teacher qualities in our model did not fully match the dimensions cited most often in contemporary teacher effectiveness studies. For example, TIMSS did not include measures of the teachers’ actual knowledge and skills to teach mathematics (see for example, Blömeke et al. 2012 ; Tatto et al. 2012 ).

2.7 Conclusions and Recommendations

The results of the present study clearly support the relevance of teacher quality for instructional quality and for educational outcomes. Instructional quality and mathematics achievement were significantly related to several teacher characteristics selected on the basis of contemporary research and, their availability within the TIMSS 2011 data. Patterns emerged across countries and cultures, both with respect to the absolute level of some constructs and the relations between teacher quality, instructional quality and outcomes. Some characteristics were more regionally relevant. However, although the model fits the data from the majority of countries, the structural relations represented by this model do not provide a universal model.

The lack of a universally applicable model is obvious: significant research is needed to clarify the generalizability of these results. One particular topic for research concerns the relevance of initial teacher education, which several times was found to be non-significant, replicating previous findings from other cross-sectional surveys (see for instance, Nordenbo et al. 2008 ). This could be related to the fact that teacher education has changed profoundly in many countries over the last decades (Wang et al. 2003 ; Darling-Hammond and Lieberman 2012 ). It is reasonable to assume that characteristics of students recruited into the profession have changed over time. Access to teacher education may historically have been more selective and restricted to students with relatively higher marks from secondary education. Also, the demand and provision of deep mathematical knowledge in the teacher education may have changed as teacher education has been reformed at specific points in time. Teacher experience and formal qualifications as measured in TIMSS are therefore likely confounded with other characteristics not included in our model. Distinguishing between age cohorts would provide important information, but this was not feasible with the current data set given the already rather small sample size. One solution for future surveys could be to include larger samples of teachers and classrooms in countries where changes in some of these confounding characteristics can be described and included in the model from other sources.

We have chosen to focus on cognitive outcomes in this chapter, given that other chapters in this book cover student motivation or bullying as outcomes. It is important to recall that outcomes of education are multi-dimensional and that cognitive and motivational variables are both important. Evidence suggests that motives are often positively related to cognitive learning outcomes and that motivation supports cognitive learning long term (Benware and Deci 1984 ; Grolnick and Ryan 1987 ). Reducing schooling to cognitive outcomes would therefore be a shortcoming. In further studies of how teacher quality and instructional quality relates to outcomes, it would therefore be relevant to include also students’ motivation and interest as dependent variables in one and the same model.

Another major recommendation for future studies based on our experience with analyzing the complex relationship between teacher quality, instructional quality and student outcomes, is that future surveys need invest in the development of improved measures of instructional quality. A long-standing controversy exists whether teacher or student ratings describe instructional quality more reliably and/or more validly (Desimone 2011 ; Schlesinger and Jentsch 2016 ; Wagner et al. 2015 ). Current research understanding suggests that the correlation between these two approaches is only moderate and that their relation with student achievement differs. This may reflect not only that students and teachers perceptions differ, but also that the measures represent slightly different aspects of the instructional activities taking place in the classroom. In general, we would therefore recommend that measures of instructional quality, in line with the current practice in the IEA studies, include both types of sources to develop measures of the quality of the instructional activities.

However, the current measures in both the teacher and the student questionnaires fail to fully represent the depth and breadth of the concept of instructional quality. The three core aspects in the measure of InQua that we applied (clarity of instruction, cognitive activation, and supportive climate) are represented by two items only. Each of these aspects represents separate and relatively broad and many-faceted constructs by themselves, which should be reflected in future studies. Furthermore, classroom management is a vital dimension of instructional quality not included in the generic teacher questionnaire. And not the least, as discussed already, the construct used in this chapter is based on generic questions, while it would provide more fidelity to the analysis if a measure specific to the quality of the mathematics lessons had been applied. In future surveys, priority should rather be given to the improvement of context sensitive measures of instructional quality. Frequency of different specific activities may not represent an ideal way to assess the quality with which these activities are carried through. Some actions probably occur relatively often in high quality teaching (for instance, summarizing at the end of the lecture), while others would probably need to be used less often in order to represent an optimal quality (for instance, working on problems with no obvious solution). In summary, new improved measures of InQua should:

reflect both students’ and teachers’ experiences,

have a broader scope, including the four core components, clarity of instruction, cognitive activation, classroom management, and supportive climate,

cover each of these aspects in depth by including separate, but related, constructs,

be subject-specific rather than generic, and

include scales aimed at capturing qualities of various activities.

For country-specific descriptives including information about their distribution in terms of skewness and kurtosis see Appendices A and B; for more details about the item format see the TIMSS data analysis manual (Foy et al. 2013 ).

The TIMSS data set includes an IRT-based construct composed of these items, labelled as Collaborate to Improve Teaching (CIT). For the purpose of being able to interpret the mean and range in country comparisons in the same way as the other two parcels, we therefore opted for a classical mean raw score used as a third item parcel, each representing different aspects of PD. Furthermore, we were able to confirm measurement invariance of the latent construct PD with this indicator.

The TIMSS data set includes an index representing socioeconomic background in terms of Home Educational Resources (HER) that includes also other indicators such as parental income, occupation and education level. Nevertheless, we opted for using “books at home” because in contrast to HER this variable has remained unaltered for many cycles and very similar indicators of home background are used in all other international large-scale studies. This makes it easier to compare results with previous research. Moreover, “books at home” has been and still is a powerful predictor of achievement (compared to parents’ education, which is part of HER).

The fit indexes were evaluated to the following commonly recommended criteria: a ratio of chi-square deviance and degrees of freedom of <2 indicates a very good model fit, estimates <3 indicate a good fit. Estimates of the comparative fit index (CFI) and the Tucker Lewis index (TLI) >0.95 indicate a very good model fit, and estimates >0.90 indicate a good model fit (Hu and Bentler 1999 ). Estimates of the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) <0.05 indicate a very good model fit, and estimates <0.08 indicate a good model fit.

This argument is not directly applicable to the parcels representing the three theoretically-based aspects of InQua, since they consist of two variables only. The total internal consistency for the manifest variable using all six variables as compared to the variable using the three item parcels is only a fraction higher, 0.65 as compared to 0.61, which demonstrates that the parcels function almost equivalent to the single items.

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Correspondence to Sigrid Blömeke .

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University of Oslo , Blindern, Oslo, Norway

Trude Nilsen

Dept. of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

Jan-Eric Gustafsson

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Blömeke, S., Olsen, R.V., Suhl, U. (2016). Relation of Student Achievement to the Quality of Their Teachers and Instructional Quality. In: Nilsen, T., Gustafsson, JE. (eds) Teacher Quality, Instructional Quality and Student Outcomes. IEA Research for Education, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41252-8_2

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41252-8_2

Published : 20 September 2016

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Online ISBN : 978-3-319-41252-8

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