Taking Their First Steps: The Distribution of New Teachers in School and Classroom Contexts and Implications for Teacher Effectiveness

Abstract

Novice teachers’ professional contexts may have important implications for their effectiveness, development, and retention. However, due to data limitations, descriptions of these contexts are often unidimensional or vague. Using 10 years of administrative data from the Los Angeles Unified School District, we describe patterns of new teacher sorting using 24 context measures organized along three dimensions—intensity of instructional responsibilities, homophily, and colleagues’ qualifications—and use school-level survey data to measure a fourth dimension. professional culture. Relative to more experienced teachers, novice teachers have placements that are more challenging along the first three dimensions, and composite measures of the dimensions are differentially predictive of teachers’ outcomes. This suggests that policymakers should carefully consider placements to better support novice teachers.

Disconnected Development? The Importance of Specific Human Capital in the Transition From Student Teaching to the Classroom

“…Goldhaber et al (2017), for instance, find that there is a dichotomy between the relative advantage (as measured by the percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch [FRL] or underrepresented minority students) of the schools in which student teaching occurs and teachers' first job schools. This reflects the broader teacher labor market trend that novice teachers tend to be assigned to more disadvantaged schools and classrooms than more experienced teachers (e.g., Bruno et al, 2020;Goldhaber et al, 2015;Kalogrides et al, 2013).…”

Not enough hours in the day

“…Thinking about how much time teachers allocate to different tasks should be seen as a complement (and by no means as a substitute) to the question of how teachers engage in these tasks. For example, it is clear that providing teachers with "sufficient time" for professional learning is only meaningful if they have the opportunity and support to use this time for effective learning activities (Boeskens, Nusche and Yurita, 2020 [7]). Conversely, investing resources in teachers' professional learning offer is futile if teachers do not have the time to engage with it.…”

“…Supporting teachers to engage in effective forms of continuing professional learning (CPL) from the beginning to the end of their career is critical to help them refresh, develop and broaden their knowledge and skills, to keep up with changing research, tools, practices and students' needs (OECD, 2019 [3]; OECD, 2005 [70]; Boeskens, Nusche and Yurita, 2020 [7]). Empirical research has occasionally raised doubts about the effectiveness of traditional formats of professional development, which often rely on large-scale, one-off externally provided courses (Yoon et al, 2007[71]; TNPT, 2015 [72]).…”

“…teachers in schools with less administrative and management staff per teacher spent less time on administrative work. 7 Of course, these cross-sectional associations need to be interpreted with great care, both across and within countries. Even if they were to be indicative of a causal relationship, it would not be clear in which direction the causation would run.…”

“…In order to make teachers' planning and marking time more productive, structured collaboration with peers may be a more promising strategy to save teachers' time than disengaging from these tasks altogether. The importance of teacher collaboration on these and other tasks for their continuing professional growth is explored in a separate OECD paper on policies to support teachers' professional learning (Boeskens, Nusche and Yurita, 2020 [7]). The powerful role that technology can play in helping teachers save time on routine tasks and use their time more efficiently for core tasks is discussed in a separate paper on the use of ICT resources in school education as well as a policy brief (OECD, 2021 [138]), also prepared in the context of the OECD School Resources Review.…”