Abstract: With annual standardized student testing, it now may be feasible to measure the contributions to student achievement made by individual teachers. But will these “teacher valueadded” measures help to improve student achievement and learning? I address this question through a “policy validity” framework” that includes three factors: (a) statistical validity, i.e., how well teacher value...

Educators, politicians, the general public—everyone wants excellent teachers in our nation’s classrooms. Teachers want to be held to high standards, teacher educators want to inspire quality teaching in prospective teachers, educational researchers want to ascertain the most effective methods for evaluating teachers, and community members and policymakers want to make sure American teachers cha...

What makes a good teacher, and how should we structure classrooms to promote effective teaching? This paper investigates the idea that a good teacher is a good communicator, using models of optimal pragmatic communication to explore the dynamics of classroom learning. The proposed model describes teaching as choosing examples of a concept to present to students in order to maximize their inform...

the concept of teacher efficacy has received significant attention in educational contexts in the recent years and has been empirically probed at 2 levels: individual teacher efficacy and collective teacher efficacy. having their origins in the social cognitive theory, teacher and collective efficacy perceptions are quite distinct constructs, each affecting educational decisions and student ach...

In a recent technological education teacher development study, two elements of teacher socialization–the process of formally preparing to become a teacher (Ginsburg, 1988, p.1)–were singled out for review. First, the study set out to examine the influences on teacher socialization prior to formal teacher education. Second, the impact of pre-service teacher education itself, was explored. The so...