What do effective teachers of inner-city children have in common?

The results indicate that both types of variables explain significant portions of the variation in student achievement, including teachers' choices of techniques and teachers' backgrounds and training.

Abstract

This paper investigates the extent to which variables describing the classroom behavior of teachers and variables describing teachers' backgrounds and training explain differences in the effectiveness of teachers in improving the vocabulary skills of inner-city black children in four elementary grade levels. The results indicate that both types of variables explain significant portions of the variation in student achievement. In other words, teachers' choices of techniques matter; and the characteristics of teachers provide some information about their effectiveness. However, the pattern of results indicates that great care must be taken in interpreting individual coefficients. The paper concludes with an interpretation of the results and with suggestions for new directions for research on teaching that follow from this interpretation.