Topic: Teacher Effectiveness and Behavior: Their Relationship and Impact on Student Learning

The purpose of this dissertation topic is to review the efficacy of teacher learning and how it correlates to student performance. Research has shown a large disparity between student outcomes and external factors such as school resources, social-economic status, and racial makeup (Amber, 2012). Many of these factors also impact teacher effectiveness and behavior as they directly impact the learning environment in which the teacher operates in. This further creates a compounding effect as teachers are less like to innovate their curriculum, enhance classroom culture, or to improve operation efficiencies. Although these factors are distinct from teacher efficacy, they all have direct correlation on teacher effectiveness and behavior. As a result, this document will look to review leadership theories that can impact one or more of the factors above, and how these frameworks can ultimately improve student outcomes.

The teaching profession is one of the oldest and most storied careers in human history. Its history can be traced back to 561 B.C. where Confucius is created with being the first private teacher in human history. Since this period, the ancient Greeks adopted many of the confusion principles and used private teachers as a means of educating their children. By the time of the middle ages, much more prolific institutions such as Cambridge University were established. Here, teacher training now became much more mainstream and in certain areas of the world required. The colonials during the time of the nations founded erected laws that required elementary schools to be built for every 50 families in an area and a Latin grammar school to build for every 100 families. The 1800 and 1900s where the transition towards high schools, increases in teacher training, and increases in teacher pay. By the early 1900s the teaching system as we know it today, predicated by elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, technical schools, colleges, and universities, were all well established. The primary element during this phase was race, as noted in the introduction. Cases such as Brown v. Board of Education allowed for more equitable treatment of minorities within this education system established over many centuries. Today, teaching is transitioning into online and hybrid technologies requiring teachers to have a much more varied and flexible skills set. Legislation such as No Child Left Behind ushered in an era of teacher accountability, standardized testing , and emphasis on basic classroom skills. This brief history of the educational profession is vital as it informs of society on the models and leadership methods will be successful going forward. For one, many of these models must be able to account for the rapid change occurring in the industry overall as it relates to technology and how services are rendered. Likewise, policies must recognize many of the failings of the past and leverage them to promote a better atmosphere for both student and teachers to thrive. For example, historically, women and minorities were often excluded from many of the teaching innovations discussed above. Until the early...

…helps induce this positive correlation. However, a number of factors have generally been known to increase teacher effectiveness. First as noted above, empowering teachers allows teachers to properly innovate in a manner that benefits their particular classroom setting. In addition, principls and school leadership leverage transformational leadership to properly reward high performing teachers while help to uplift lower performing teachers. This ultimately incentives strong instructor behavior which is in stark contrast to current systems. The current education systems often reward both higher performing and mediocre teachers similarly. In addition, it is difficult to fire lower performing teachers due to the overall power to teacher unions. What occurs is a flight of quality as more high preforming teachers leave the profession as they are not appreciated or compensated adequately, their peers are receiving the same benefits for lower performance, and the teaching environment is not worth the effort many of these teachers are giving. Currently, many states in the union are experiencing teacher shortages as many highly qualified teachers simply leave for more fruitful endeavors (Michael, 2013).

By leverage transformational leadership teachers are properly rewarded for their performance. Higher performing teachers are subsequently paid more and rewarded more than low performing teacher. Likewise, leadership allows teachers to innovate in a manner that allows them to better cater to the needs of their students, particularly minorities. This style of leadership looks to better account for student outcomes and looks to make a much more robust learning experience for all students and faculty. This ultimately leads to better…