This study investigates the dynamic interplay between teacher-child relationship quality and children’s behaviors across kindergarten and first grade to predict academic competence in first grade. Using a sample of 338 ethnically diverse 5-year-old children, nested path analytic models were conducted to examine bidirectional pathways between children’s behaviors and teacherchild relationship qu...

The extensive investigation of the contribution of teachers to student achievement produces two generally accepted results. First, there is substantial variation in teacher quality as measured by the value added to achievement or future academic attainment or earnings. Second, variables often used to determine entry into the profession and salaries, including post-graduate schooling, experience...

We investigate classroom assignments and resulting student work to identify important characteristics of assignments in terms of instructional quality and their validity as measures of teaching quality. We examine assignment quality within a large-scale project exploring multiple measures including classroom observations, teacher knowledge measures, and value-added estimates based on student ac...

Economists have suggested that the quality of higher education is not independent of the sources of funds used to fund that education. This paper examines the relationship between student measures of teaching quality and institutional revenue sources. The results indicate that a greater reliance on private subsides is associated with higher measures of teacher quality. A greater reliance on pub...

Learning environment is a vast area and varies from time to time and place to place. In the broader spectrum, a learning environment may be teacher-centered or student-centered. The teacher-centered learning environment lacks active participation of students in the teaching learning process, and lecturing is a predominant mode of instruction. Here, there is considerably less interaction among s...

Much debate surrounding teacher quality has focused on students’ standardized test scores, but recent federal and state initiatives have emphasized the use of multiple measures to evaluate teacher quality, including classroom observations. In this study, we explore differences across school districts in the relationship between student achievement outcomes and the observed quality of teachers’ ...

Current educational policy emphasizes “school readiness” of young children with a premium placed on preschool interventions that facilitate academic and social readiness for children who have had limited learning experiences prior to kindergarten (Rouse, Brooks–Gunn, & McLanahan, 2005). The teacher–child relationship is viewed as a critical mechanism for the effectiveness of interventions (Giro...

This paper uses aspects of Jurgen Habermas’s critical theory of societal development as the evaluative stance for the introduction, application and implications of evaluation of teaching quality in universities. It argues that the practice of student evaluation of teaching or Student Ratings of Teaching (SRT) is clearly designed to position students as consumers in their educational experience....

A number of factors affect successful implementation of an integrated science curriculum, including various outputs and inputs related to teacher quality such as professional development experiences, adequate planning periods, and adequate content preparation of teachers with regard to content knowledge associated with the curriculum taught (Huntley, 1998; Knudson, 1937; Leung, 2006; Palmer, 19...

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...