Funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education
The teacher racial competency study aims to further understand how teachers improve over time--and specifically how white teachers can increase their racial competency and become more effective teachers to students of color--by bridging three previously distinct literatures in education research: the returns to teaching experience, teacher peer effects, and the impact of same-race teachers. Specifically, researchers will answer two broad questions: First, does the racial makeup of a teacher's same-grade colleagues affect their teaching effectiveness or persistence in the classroom? For example, do black colleagues increase white teachers' racial competence and effectiveness teaching black students? Do black teachers benefit from having black peers in terms of teaching effectiveness or remaining in the school or profession? And if so, through what mechanisms do these peer effects operate? Second, do the returns to teaching experience depend on the demographics of the classrooms in which that experience was accrued? For example, does white teachers' effectiveness teaching black students increase with repeated exposure to black students? If so, why does this happen?
The research team will use a mixed-methods research design to answer the research questions. The quantitative analyses aim to identify and quantify the association between peers/classroom experience and teachers' capacity to improve student outcomes and qualitative analyses aim to identify the mechanisms through which those associations might operate. Specifically, the quantitative analyses use and expand on existing value-added models of student development in which the research team will reconceptualize how teachers' peer-quality and experience are coded and enter the model; the qualitative analysis is based on teacher focus groups from 12 diverse schools. Researchers will use open-ended interview to identify how, when, and under what circumstances teachers learn from their peers and learn from the classroom experience.
Publications
Gershenson, Seth; Hart, Cassandra; Hyman, Joshua; Lindsay, Constance; Papageorge, Nicholas. "The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers." National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper w25254 http://www.nber.org/papers/w25254
Gershenson, Seth; Holt, Stephen; Papageorge, Nicholas. "Who Believes in Me? The Effect of Student-Teacher Demographic Match on Teachers' Beliefs. Economics of Education Review, 52:209-224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.03.002