A critical re-thinking of ‘teacher effectiveness’
Written by: Meg Maguire and Emma Towers
8 min read
Meg Maguire and Emma Towers, King’s College London, School of Education, Communication and Society, UK
Different perspectives on ‘teacher effectiveness’
Good teaching matters, and decades of research has shown that teachers can make a difference in student learning (Stronge, 2018) and that teachers are one of the most important in-school factors in students’ academic success and life outcomes (Burroughs et al., 2019). However, the related debate about what makes an ‘effective’ teacher is ongoing and complex. While teacher effectiveness is contested and challenging to define, especially given the complex task of teachers’ work (Stronge et al., 2011; Muijs and Reynolds, 2011), various conceptualisations of teacher effectiveness have been proposed (e.g. Ko et al., 2013; van der Lans et al., 2018), with the most common and typical interpretation connected to improved student outcomes. Studies have shown that teachers who possess certain professional and personal skills an
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