Teacher Quality and the Context of Teaching

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Teacher Quality and the Context of Teaching

• Adam Gamoran
• University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Teacher quality as teacher effects

• Teacher effects are large
• In the sense that which teacher a student has
  makes a difference for achievement
• How large?
• Sanders Rivers 3 years with a highly effective
  teacher can boost achievement as much as 50
  percentile points
• Rivkin, Hanushek, Kain a 1 s.d. increase in
  teacher quality is worth as much as a 10-student
  decrease in class size
• Nye, Konstantopoulos, Hedges a 1 s.d. increase
  in teacher quality is worth a 1/3 s.d. increase
  in math achievement, less in reading

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Teacher quality as teacher effects

• Qualifications
• What are called teacher effects are usually a
  mix of teacher, peer, and other classroom effects
• Teachers and classrooms not distinguished
• The mechanisms through which teacher effects
  occur have not been well identified
• The role of the context in which teachers work
  has not been investigated

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Teacher effects v. teacher quality

• A puzzle if teacher effects are so large, why
  have the mechanisms not been identified?
• Inadequate theory
• Inadequate data
• Inadequate measurement tools
• How can we solve this puzzle?

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Sources of teacher/classroom effects

• Teacher characteristics
• Subject matter knowledge
• Experience
• Certification status
• Classroom characteristics
• Track/ability group
• Class size
• Class composition

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Sources of teacher/classroom effects

• Classroom activities
• Not what teachers do, but what teachers and
  students do together
• So teaching may be endogenous to students
• Measurement
• Relatively simple in early elementary grades
• More complex as students move up grade levels

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Sources of teacher/classroom effects

• Measures of class activities that predict
  achievement
• Coverage of content
• Teacher logs
• Survey of enacted curriculum

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Effects of content coverage
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Sources of teacher/classroom effects

• Measures of class activities that predict
  achievement
• Instructional strategies
• Reading wars phonics vs. whole language
• Math wars drill vs. teaching for understanding
• In reading, both have proven important
• The same will likely emerge in math

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Effects of kindergarten reading instruction
(teacher reported)
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Effects of kindergarten reading instruction
(teacher reported)
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Effects of kindergarten math instruction (teacher
reported)
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The context of teacher effects

• Earlier view school characteristics could
  leverage classroom events
• Restructuring studies showed this is not
  correct
• Changing practice reflects teacher learning, not
  school structure
• However, school characteristics may enhance or
  inhibit the relation between teacher learning and
  teaching practice

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The context of teacher effects

• Schools with greater capacity for change are
  better able to support improved practice
• By capacity, we mean
• Material resources such as time, money
• Human resources teacher knowledge, skills, and
  dispositions
• Social resources relation of trust and shared
  values that allow teachers to discuss new ideas
  and provide a safe environment for change

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A study of teacher effects in context

• The new education sciences calls for rigorous
  designs that permit causal inference
• Can we combine this with
• Conceptions that draw on disciplinary knowledge?
• Opening the black box to examine events inside
  classrooms?
• These qualities are needed to identify mechanisms
  of teacher effects

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A study of teacher effects in context

• The case of elementary science in Los Angeles, CA
• Los Angeles lowest average score in CA on 4th
  grade NAEP science
• CA lowest average scores in the U.S.
• Improvement strategy District centralized
  curriculum

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A study of teacher effects in context

• Immersion teaching in K-8 science
• Extended, inquiry-based curricular units
• Rigorous content based on California state
  science standards
• Grade 4 Cycling of matter and transfer of energy
• Grade 5 Weather forces and prediction

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A study of teacher effects in context

• Efficacy trials of immersion teaching
• Positive effects of immersion teaching in a
  quasi-experiment, particularly for African
  American students
• Positive effects of professional development for
  immersion teaching on teacher knowledge in
  pre-post studies
• Implementation challenges
• Simply distributing the curriculum did not change
  practice
• Response Intensive professional development

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A study of teacher effects in context

• Scaling up immersion teaching
• 40 treatment schools, 40 control schools
• Power .80 with n100 students per school, d
  .20, covariate correlation .80
• Treatment intensive professional development
  for immersion teaching
• All teachers can get the curriculum, but only
  those who get the pd are likely to use it

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A study of teacher effects in context

• Allowing for context
• Teacher survey indicators of material, human,
  social resources
• Models will test school-level interaction of
  treatment x capacity
• Expectation is that treatment effects will be
  larger in schools with greater capacity

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A study of teacher effects in context

• Strengths of this approach
• Randomized treatment allows for stronger causal
  inference
• Evidence on mechanisms (observations of
  instruction)
• Evidence on context (school capacity)
• Limitation generalizability
• Evidence on context helps, but does not fully
  resolve this limitation

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Conclusions

• Teacher/classroom effects are large, but too
  little is known about how these effects occur
• We need to get inside classrooms to find out
• Focus on implementation and context will be
  essential to understanding teacher/classroom
  effects

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References

• Gamoran, A., and S. Kelly. 2003. Tracking,
  instruction, and unequal literacy in secondary
  school English. Pp. 109-126 in M. T. Hallinan,
  A. Gamoran, W. Kubitschek, and T. Loveless
  (Eds.), Stability and change in American
  education Structure, process, and outcomes.
  Clinton Corners, NY Eliot Werner Publications.
• Milesi, C., and A. Gamoran. 2006. Effects of
  class size and instruction on kindergarten
  achievement. Educational Evaluation and Policy
  Analysis, 28, 287-313.
• Nye, B., Konstantopoulos, S., Hedges, L. V.
  (2004). How large are teacher effects?
  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 26,
  237-257.
• Rivkin, S.G., Hanushek, E.A. Kain, J.F. (2005).
  Teachers, schools and academic achievement.
  Econometrica, 73, 417-458.
• Rowan, B., E. Camburn, and R. Correnti. 2004.
  Using teacher logs to measure the enacted
  curriculum in large-scale surveys Insights from
  the Study of Instructional Improvement.
  Elementary School Journal, 105, 75-102.
• Sanders, W. Rivers, J. (1996). Cumulative and
  residual effects of teachers on future student
  academic achievement. Knoxville, TN University
  of Tennessee.
• White, P. A., A. C. Porter, A. Gamoran, and J.
  Smithson. 1996. Upgrading high school math A
  look at three transition courses. NASSP Bulletin,
  81 (Fall 1997), 72-83.