What makes great teaching? Review of the underpinning research.
- Submitting institution
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University of Durham
- Unit of assessment
- 23 - Education
- Output identifier
- 93669
- Type
- N - Research report for external body
- DOI
-
-
- Commissioning body
- Sutton Trust
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2014
- URL
-
https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/great-teaching/
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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3
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The purpose of the review was to identify key characteristics of effective teaching in schools. For the first review question, “what makes great teaching?”, the aim was to identify teacher behaviours which are associated with student learning. Using systematic search techniques, literature from school effectiveness and school improvement research was identified where this association could be identified. A list of teacher behaviours was produced from this search and the strength of the association used to provide an overall ranking of these teacher behaviours and characteristics. Thematic analysis was used to group them in terms of six key areas (pedagogical content knowledge, quality of instruction, classroom climate, classroom management, teacher beliefs and professional behaviours). An overall assessment of the strength of evidence for each theme was identified based on the strength of the association and quality of the underlying studies. A second research question, “What kinds of frameworks or tools could help us to capture it [great teaching]?” was addressed by identifying classroom observation tools which correlate with student attainment and which might provide information to support formative assessment of teaching, using systematic search techniques. Six categories of observation were identified. The first three demonstrated moderate validity in signalling teacher effectiveness: classroom observations by peers, principals or external evaluators, ‘value-added’ models (assessing gains in student achievement) and student ratings. The three other approaches had more limited evidence: principal (or headteacher) judgement, teacher self-reports and the analysis of classroom artefacts and teacher portfolios. A final research question, “How could this promote better learning?”, used an analysis of effective professional development to identify six key features of effective feedback to teachers relating to the two earlier research questions. The funder, the Sutton Trust, provided feedback on the design and methods for the review.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
