The importance of good teachers is no secret. Schools and their communities have always sought out the best teachers they could get in the belief that their students’ success depends on it.
But what we know instinctively still leaves some big questions, especially for those in charge of hiring, training and retaining a qualified teaching force. To begin with, how do you define a good teacher?
What characteristics do you look for? Given all the factors related to student performance, how much impact can we expect from teachers? And finally, if teachers are so important to student learning, how can we make sure all students receive the benefit of good teachers?
Impact of Teacher Effectiveness on Student Achievement
The work of Bill Sanders, formerly at the University of Tennessee's Value-Added Research and Assessment Center, has been pivotal in reasserting the importance of the individual teacher on student learning. One aspect of his research has been the additive or cumulative effect of teacher effectiveness on student achievement. Over a multi-year period, Sanders focused on what happened to students whose teachers produced high achievement versus those whose teachers produced low achievement results.
He discovered that when children, beginning in 3rd grade, were placed with three high-performing teachers in a row, they scored on average at the 96th percentile on Tennessee's statewide mathematics assessment at the end of 5th grade. When children with comparable achievement histories starting in 3rd grade were placed with three low-performing teachers in a row, their average score on the same mathematics assessment was at the 44th percentile,an enormous 52-percentile point difference for children who presumably had comparable abilities and skills. Elaborating on this body of research, Dr. Sanders and colleagues reported the following:
. . . the results of this study well document that the most important factor affecting student learning is the teacher. In addition, the results show wide variation in effectiveness among teachers. The immediate and clear implication of this finding is that seemingly more can be done to improve education by improving the effectiveness of teachers than by any other single factor. Effective teachers appear to be effective with students of all achievement levels, regardless of the level of heterogeneity in their classrooms.
By best, I don’t mean those who are the best qualified, but those teachers who know how to enthuse and connect with children regardless of their own levels of education. I mean those teachers who can properly engage with children and teach them by inspiring and challenging them.
Sometimes the pathway dictates that the process comes down to hard work rather than inspiration, but teaching is all about the relationship between teacher and pupil more than anything else.
Children will work harder for a teacher they respect, even if they demand more and insist on discipline and high standards.
One can only speculate what would have been the impact if all the money spent on technology had gone instead into lowering the teacher-pupil ratio and improving the identification, selection and training of the most effective and passionate teachers. Where would we be now? In a somewhat better place, I would suggest.
One particular year she took on a particularly difficult class of Year 4 children, two of whom had considerable physical and intellectual difficulties and could not even print their names and yet finished the year with impressive cursive writing – achieved through repetition, practice, discipline and unwavering high expectations.
She made such a difference to their young lives and all who were fortunate enough to have her as a teacher.
Good teachers don’t need the security of extra resources and technology that, evidence suggests, can detract rather than add to the learning process.
While they may use resources to embellish their lessons, they will not allow the resources to become the lesson. The best teachers are always wanting to do and find out more about their own craft, pushing out the boundaries of their learning and teaching, which is why many exceptional teaches re-work or even discard their teaching notes on a regular basis and look for new topics, and ways, to teach.
This lesson came home to me when I was asked to introduce art history into the sixth form in a New Zealand school and finding - after the subject had been offered, and places filled - that my knowledge of the period (Italian Art, 1300 – 1650) was almost as deficient as were my resources.
That year, with a few old text books and slides, I learnt alongside the students and at the year’s end, we were the top performing department in the school with one student in the top 10 in national scholarships.
The next year, I went to Italy and soon had the best resourced art history department anywhere with videos and CD Roms, slides, a library of outstanding books of reproductions, computer programmes on every aspect of the course, but my students never did quite so well ever again.
I think they learned better, as I did, by having to think more, by having to eke out what they could from the meagre resources, by having to think and having a teacher learning alongside them. There was no hiding place for any of us.
They may be unorthodox, idiosyncratic, employing a variety of approaches to get children to want to learn and to question what they are being taught. They are typified by their passion, their non-negotiable standards, breadth of interests, high expectations, understanding of how children learn, empathy, an insistence on greater self-discipline and by their relationship with their pupils.
Interestingly, children know who the best teachers are, even if they try and avoid them in favour of the more popular variety who may make their lives easy. They often criticise them to their parents for being too demanding and only realise later the opportunity they have squandered.
These are the teachers who entered the profession in order to make a difference. And they do.
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