What Makes an Effective Teacher?

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Everyone knows that when it comes to making a difference in a child’s academic and life achievements, their teachers play a large role. A teacher’s ability to relate to their students, and teach them to achieve both socially and academically contributes to how effective they are. What does it mean to be an effective teacher? Overall there seems to be an emphasis on teacher effectiveness related to how well their students are performing on standardized testing. As teachers we know there is more to being an effective teacher then just teaching our students based on tests. This paper will identify different definitions of an effective teacher along with how to assess teachers on being effective. Teacher Effectiveness: Characteristics and Skills of an Effective Teacher Teacher effectiveness has generated different definitions depending on how it had been viewed. Jupp and Education (2009) define effectiveness as “the practical outputs of teachers”. These outputs take place in two different forms, quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative means it can be measured or expressed in numerical form. Qualitative is related to the character of something. Test scores and assessments of students are quantitative and teacher observations of their students are qualitative. In their article, Jupp and Education (2009) strongly feel teacher effectiveness cannot be looked at based on one point in time; instead students learning should be evaluated from the beginning of a school year to the end looking at what students know before and what they know exiting. In a book written by Farr (2010) book, Teacher as Leadership: the Highly Effective Teachers Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap, effective teachers are ... ... middle of paper ... ... After all, when we discuss and aspire for teacher effectiveness the progress of our students comes first, so it is our responsibility to make sure we provide that chance for everyone. References Farr, S. (2010). Teacher as leadership: The highly effective teachers guide to closing the achievement gap. San Francisco, CA: A Wiley Imprint. Goe, L., Bell, C., and Little O. (2008). Approaches to evaluating teacher effectiveness: A Research synthesis. Washington, DC: National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality. Hinchey, P. H., & University of Colorado at Boulder, N. (2010). Getting teacher assessment right: What policymakers can learn from research. National Education Policy Center. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Jupp, B., & Education, T. (2009). What states can do to improve teacher effectiveness. K-12 policy. Education Trust. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

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