Identifying effective teachers: The case study of Spain

The formation of effective teachers has been one of the main aims of education systems from their very beginning. The main objective of this research is to identify effective teachers based on their teaching practices and efficient use of their available resources. It is common in the effectiveness literature to rely on the achievement of teacher’s students to measure the effectiveness of a particular teacher. Nevertheless, we propose the capacity of teachers to engage students in their lessons as an alternative to students’ achievement, as it may be reflecting their ability to raise students’ learning interest and, thus, denoting their effectiveness. In order to indentify these teachers, we focus on fourth grade reading and mathematics teachers in Spain –using TIMSS and PIRLS 2011 data– and we propose a two step procedure whose first step consists of obtaining a measure of teachers’ efficiency using their available educational resources to explain their students’ achievement. Then, the latter is employed in a second step together with teachers’ practices in the classroom to explain students’ engagement in lessons. The relevance of this research is rooted on the determination of the characteristics, teaching procedures and efficient use of resources which can make a teacher effective. To the extent that these effective teachers are able to improve their students’ engagement thanks to their effective methods and independently of their students’ socio-economic background, they would be fostering the improvement of social mobility and education systems, and hence the socio-cultural development of the Spanish society.