State of the Art – Teacher Effectiveness and Professional Learning

One of the key findings from decades of Educational Effectiveness Research is the importance of the classroom level as a predictor of pupil outcomes. Research has consistently shown not only that the classroom level can explain more of the variance in pupil outcomes than the school level, but that a large proportion of this classroom level variance can be explained by what teachers do in the classroom (Muijs & Reynolds, 2010). As a result of these findings classroom practise has become firmly integrated into theoretical and empirical models of educational effectiveness (e.g. Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008). As part of this endeavour, school effectiveness has made strong links to the older field of teacher effectiveness, and has used many of the methods associated with that field, such as classroom observation using standardised observation instruments, adding to that different methods such as surveys and qualitative exploration, and newer understandings of learning and teaching. One element that has traditionally been less developed in educational effectiveness research is that of teacher professional development. This omission is somewhat peculiar in the light of the importance of professional development in models of effective school improvement, and the clear implication that if teacher behaviours are key to educational effectiveness, we need to pay attention to ways in which we can change practise as well as looking at what effective practise is.