May 31: Last day to save $75 on registration for 2012 Annual Conference in Boston More Info June 30: Board of Trustees nomination deadline More Info July 22-25: 2012 Summer Conference in Denver More Info

Teacher expertise linked to student learning

Virtually all their teachers must be learning virtually all the time.

By Dennis Sparks
RESULTS - April 1998

Two recent reports highlight the importance of teacher expertise in improving student achievement. In his column in the January 1998 Phi Delta Kappan, Chris Pipho reports on Tennessee's value-added assessment system. "The single largest factor affecting academic growth of student populations is differences in effectiveness of individual classroom teachers. . . . Lower-achieving students are the first to benefit as teacher effectiveness improves." Variations in teacher effectiveness are often greater within a single building than across buildings within a district, he notes.

The follow-up report to What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future by the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future makes a similar point. That follow-up report - Doing What Matters Most - cites a Texas study that found teachers' expertise accounts for about 40 percent of the variance in students' reading and mathematics achievement at grades 1 through 11, more than any other single factor. "The effects were so strong and the variations in teacher expertise so great," the report notes, "that, after controlling for socioeconomic status, the large disparities in achievement between black and white students were almost entirely accounted for by differences in the qualifications of their teachers."

Staff development plays an important role in teacher expertise, according to Doing What Matters Most. The report discusses the value of curriculum-based professional development and cites a study by David Cohen and Heather Hill which found that ". . . mathematics teachers who participated in sustained professional development based on the curriculum they were learning to teach were much more likely than those who engaged in other kinds of professional development to report reform-oriented teaching practices. . . . Teachers collaboratively studied [curriculum] materials, developed and tried lessons, and discussed the results with their colleagues, raising issues of mathematics content, instruction, and learning together."

At its core, good teaching requires that teachers have a deep knowledge of the subjects they teach, a repertoire of instructional skills to teach that content, knowledge about their students, and attitudes that support high levels of learning for all students.

Deep knowledge of content. Recently developed content standards often ask teachers to teach students to deeper levels than they themselves have had. Consequently, teachers must engage in sustained, intellectually rigorous study of what they teach. In addition, those who teach the teachers must model strategies those teachers are being asked to use.

Repertoire of instructional skills. Some instructional strategies are more powerful than others in a particular subject area (for instance, see the Handbook of Research on Improving Student Achievement, edited by Gordon Cawelti and available through NSDC). All teachers need ongoing opportunities to learn and practice those strategies.

Knowledge regarding students. Good teachers understand the developmental needs of their students. They also understand the strengths and challenges inherent in the cultures and communities from which those students come.

Attitudes that support high levels of learning. Among other important beliefs, teachers must believe that virtually all their students can learn at high levels given appropriate instructional approaches and sufficient time and that their efforts can make a difference in their students' learning.

If every student is to have a competent teacher, then virtually all their teachers must be learning virtually all the time. While that learning will occasionally happen in workshops and courses, most of it will occur as teachers plan lessons together, examine their students' work to find ways to improve it, observe one another teach, and plan improvements based on various data. Those of us concerned about teacher expertise must take leadership in designing such a system for learning.