A Study of the Extent of Association of Certain Professional and Personal Data with Judged Effectiveness of Teacher Behavior

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate certain factors or conditions that might be relat ed to effective teaching at the elementary school level and to estimate the extent to which meas ures of such conditions were associated with judg ments of teaching effectiveness made by trained observers. Various hypotheses may be advanced regard ing sets of conditions that either (1) operate as selective devices, or (2) tend to affect directly the typical behavior patterns of teachers. For example, differences in policies and practices among school systems might be expected to at tract certain kinds of teachers to specified sys tems to the exclusion of others. Or, teaching experience might reasonably be expected to leave its mark on a teacher, influencing directly her classroom performance. The Teacher Characteristics Study has attempt ed to test a number of such hypotheses. The re sults to be reported here have to do with?elemen tary teachers who had been classified, first, ac cording to effectiveness of classroom perform ance as judged by trained observers, and second, with respect to such professional and personal data as: