Panel:
Building a Better Teacher: Teacher Preparation, Student Teaching, and Teacher Coaching
(Education)
Thursday, November 12, 2015: 1:45 PM-3:15 PM
Flamingo (Hyatt Regency Miami)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Panel Organizers: Paul T. von Hippel, University of Texas, Austin
Panel Chairs: Jane Arnold Lincove, University of Texas, Austin
Discussants: Sean Corcoran, New York University
Teacher quality is important to student success, and teachers can and do improve, especially during their early years of teaching. While much of the policy conversation around teacher quality involves ways of attracting, retaining, and rewarding the best teachers, teaching is a very large profession and there are only so many stars. In order to substantially improve average teacher quality, we must identify ways of making ordinary teachers better both before and after they enter the classroom. As discussed in Elizabeth Green's 2014 book Building a Better Teacher, we can't just buy better teachers. We have to build them.
This session estimates the effects of programs that attempt to improve teachers at several stages of their career. We start with preservice teacher preparation programs, continue with student teaching for novice instructors, and finish with coaching for more experienced teachers.
