What promotes teacher development? Examining the effect of the professional environment on the productivity growth of teachers

Matthew Kraft

Recent efforts to reform districts? human capital practices focus narrowly on teachers and fail to address the importance of the school context in shaping teachers? career decisions and facilitating their success with students. I propose to examine the role of the school environment in supporting or constraining teachers? ability to become more effective. I ask whether more supportive professional environments promote greater growth in teacher productivity, as measured by the ability to raise student test scores. Drawing upon work redesign theory and previous research, I develop six measures of developmental supports in schools using items from a biannual teacher survey. I then propose to model rates of on-the-job learning for individual teachers and test for systematic variation caused by differences in the school environments in which teachers work. This study will be one of the first empirical studies of the role of the school environment in promoting teacher productivity growth.

About Matthew Kraft

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