The next meeting will take place on 16th April at 7:30pm and will be moderated by @AlomShaha.
Metzler, Johannes & Woessmann, Ludger (2010) The Impact of Teacher Subject Knowledge on Student Achievement: Evidence from Within-Teacher Within-Student Variation IZA DP No. 4999 [PDF]
Teachers differ greatly in how much they teach their students, but little is known about which teacher attributes account for this. We estimate the causal effect of teacher subject knowledge on student achievement using within-teacher within-student variation, exploiting a unique Peruvian 6th-grade dataset that tested both students and their teachers in two subjects. We circumvent omitted-variable and selection biases using student and teacher fixed effects and observing teachers teaching both subjects in one-classroom-per-grade schools. After measurement-error correction, one standard deviation in subject-specific teacher achievement increases student achievement by about 10 percent of a standard deviation.
The questions SciTeachJC will focus on for this chat are:
- “The results suggest that teacher subject knowledge should be clearly on the agenda of educational administrators and policy-makers”. If subject knowledge is demonstrably critical for teacher quality, should regular subject knowledge CPD be compulsory?
- What efforts have you made since starting teaching to improve your subject knowledge?
- Science teachers often teach subjects other than their own (as do many other teachers). Do you think you do a better job in your own specialism?
- “While there is clear evidence that teacher quality is a key determinant of student learning, little is known about which specific observable characteristics of teachers can account for this impact” – What characteristics do you think are most important in a teacher?
@AlomShaha will be moderating the discussion.