Reflections on the determinants of teacher effectiveness

˙ PREAL Blog

The growing emphasis in the United States on making sure students reach minimum levels of learning has increased pressure to optimize the performance of teachers. This New York Times Magazine article provides an in-depth look at the debate and history of understanding teacher effectiveness in the U.S. It features Uncommon Schools founder Doug Lemov and his quest to identify the techniques that make teachers effective through his Taxonomy of Effective Teaching Practices. It notes that many factors, such as a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try, do not predict whether a teacher will be effective. Identifying what in fact makes teachers effective is crucial, as Harvard University’s Tom Kane, points out in the article:

“By figuring out what makes the great teachers great, and passing that on to the mass of teachers in the middle… we could ensure that the average classroom tomorrow was seeing the types of gains that the top quarter of our classrooms see today… We could close the gap between the United States and Japan on these international tests within two years.”

The article argues that effective teachers tend to share a common set of techniques, and identifies what those techniques are. It reminds us that mastery of subject matter is important, but far from sufficient in making teachers effective. It posits that including these techniques in teacher training programs should be a key ingredient in producing effective teachers.


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