Learning Job Skills from Colleagues at Work: Evidence from a Field Experiment Using Teacher Performance Data

Abstract

We study on-the-job learning among classroom teachers, especially learning skills from coworkers. Using data from a new field experiment, we document meaningful improvements in teacher job performance when high-and low-performing teachers working at the same school are paired and asked to work together on improving the low-performer's skills. In particular, pairs are asked to focus on specific skills identified in the low-performer's prior performance evaluations. In the classrooms of low-performing teachers treated by the intervention, students scored 0.12 standard deviations higher than students in control classrooms. These improvements in teacher performance persisted, and perhaps grew, in the year after treatment. Empirical tests suggest the improvements are likely the result of low-performing teachers learning skills from their partner. " Gary Becker (1962) Can employees learn job skills from their coworkers? Whether and how peers contribute to on-the-job learning, and at what costs, are practical questions for personnel management.Economists' interest in these questions dates to at least Alfred Marshall (1890) and, more recently, Gary Becker (1962) and Robert Lucas (1988). Yet, despite the intuitive role for coworkers in human capital development, empirical evidence of learning from coworkers is scarce. 2 In this paper we present new evidence from a random-assignment field experiment in U.S. public schools: low-performing classroom teachers in treatment schools were each matched to a high-performing colleague in their school, and pairs were encouraged to work together on improving their teaching skills. We report positive treatment effects on teacher productivity, as measured by contributions to student achievement growth, particularly for low-performing teachers. We then test empirical predictions consistent with peer learning and other potential mechanisms.While there is limited evidence on learning from coworkers specifically, there is a growing literature on productivity spillovers among coworkers generally. Morreti (2004) and Battu, Belfield, and Sloane (2003) document human capital spillovers broadly, using variation between firms, but without insight to mechanisms. Several other papers, each focusing on a specific firm or occupation as we do, also find spillovers; the apparent mechanisms are shared production opportunities or peer influence on effort (Ichino and Maggi 2000, Hamilton, Nickerson and Owan 2003, Bandiera, Barankay and Rasul 2005, Mas and Moretti 2009, Azoulay, Graff Zivin, and Wang 2010. Moreover, these spillovers may be substantial. Lucas 2 We are focused in this paper on coworker peers and learning on-the-job. A large literature examines the role of peers in classroom learning and other formal education settings (for a review see Sacerdote 2010). 2(1988) suggests human capital spillovers, broadly speaking, could explain between-country differences in income.One empirical example of learning from coworkers comes from the study of classroom teachers. Jackson and Bruegma...

Knowledge Transfer and Refinements to Connection-Based Employee Work Experience Measures

“…While our domain of study is a professional sport, we argue (and Papay, et al [9], supports) that our process can be applied to any organization in which employees work together to complete organizational tasks. This collaboration will lead to knowledge transfer from employees with greater abilities to those with lesser abilities.…”

“…While our research used data from Major League Baseball, Papay et al [9] suggest that our refinements to connectionbased experience calculations apply to other situations wherein individuals come together to work on a task and knowledge can be transferred during that collaborative work. We described two refinements to the basic process of calculating connection-based experience: first, only counting connections to unique other coworkers, and second, only counting connections to coworkers who themselves have enough experience to have gained knowledge to pass on to others.…”

“…The refined experience measures we propose and calculate, while derived from professional sports data, can be applied directly to other domains. As shown in Papay, et al [9], applying our underlying premise that workers coming together to complete an organizational task will transfer knowledge between each other and hence will learn from each other in domains outside of professional sports.…”

“…Also showing the existence of knowledge transfer between connected employees, Papay et al [9] studied on-the-job performance improvement in K-12 teachers. They wished to measure performance changes when "low-performing" teachers were paired with "highperforming" teachers.…”

Measuring the Contribution of Primary-School Teachers to Education Outcomes in The Netherlands

“…Similarly, the findings of Taylor and Tyler (2012) suggest that intensive teacher evaluations significantly improve children's math scores. Papay et al (2016) study programmes in which high-performing and low-performing teachers working at the same school are paired and asked to collaborate on improving the low-performer's skills, with a focus on those non-cognitive skills in which the teacher showed a deficiency. The estimated coefficients suggest that children of low-performing teachers treated by the intervention scored significantly higher compared to children in control classrooms.…”