Cobertura del programa, financiamiento y focalización

As prior research has suggested, a teacher’s content knowledge can have a positive effect on student achievement. Such findings have led researchers to question whether teacher training programs should provide more content training to increase a teacher’s effectiveness. However, this literature has also shown that content training alone is not enough, but instead subject matter training should be coupled with pedagogical methods to actually influence a teacher’s effectiveness (for instance how to teach math to elementary students instead of just principles of teaching or more courses in mathematics). One early study sought to isolate effects on student achievement when teachers have subject-matter knowledge. Authors Hill, Rowan, & Ball (2005) examined teacher scores on a measure of mathematical knowledge for teaching tied to student achievement tests (for kindergarten through 5th grade) between the years of 2001-2004. The survey on teacher knowledge included questions about time spent teaching math, background in math, professional development in teaching math, as well as other educational activities. Authors found that a teacher’s knowledge of teaching math had a strong predictive relationship to student achievement in math, with an increase of 0.05-0.23 standard deviations in student achievement. Authors also tested if this effect was due to a teacher’s general knowledge of teaching or if it was due to knowledge of subject-specific teaching. Findings confirmed that only a small gain in student learning resulted from a teacher’s knowledge of teaching methods, and that mathematics achievement had a positive relationship to a teacher’s knowledge of teaching math content.

Harris & Sass (2007) continued this analysis and examined the relationship between required courses in subject matter teaching in teacher preparation to gains in student achievement in Florida for students in grades 3-10. Their findings showed that certain content courses offered in training programs had a positive effect. For instance, subject matter courses in mathematics (taught in the school of education with attention to pedagogical methods) had a strong positive relationship to student achievement in high school mathematics (effect size of 3.6037 at the 0.05 level). However, mathematics and statistics courses outside the school of education (for instance within the math department) had a negative effect, suggesting that subject content should be combined with subject matter pedagogy to increase teacher effectiveness. In a similar study, authors Henry, Campbell, et al. (2013) examined elements of teacher training that could influence the effectiveness of teachers and their training programs. To test program elements, researchers used data of teachers from a large public university tied to the elementary students (grades 3-5) of graduates from that program. By isolating one institution’s effects, they explored attributes that could influence student achievement such as: content courses, pedagogy courses, subject specific pedagogy, as well as other academic metrics such as GPA and SAT/ACT scores. There were few significant findings in this study, but they did note a negative effect of one additional could on pedagogical methods of math (with an effect of -0.053 at the 0.05 level). This contrasts with the finding that the increase of one more content specific course had a positive effect on student learning in math (0.033 at the 0.05 level). Authors argue this reduction could signal that students took too many courses in one area at the cost of taking another that would’ve heightened the teacher’s effectiveness.

Researchers Grobschedl, Mahler, Kleickmann & Harms (2014) examined various learning opportunities provided to teachers and questioned which opportunity (teacher training,

professional development, on-the-job training) has the greatest impact on a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge. This study of secondary school teachers of Biology in Northern Germany administered an exam to test a teacher’s understanding of subject content as well as the teacher’s pedagogical knowledge of biology content. Results showed that when separated by training programs teachers had differing levels of content knowledge in biology (effect of 0.74 standard deviations at the 0.001 level), and those with additional professional development, have more pronounced content knowledge. Additionally, when examining the training type and its relationship to pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge, no statistical differences were found between entry level teachers and those with more experience. Authors argue these findings suggest that content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge is not gained by more experience but is instead gained through training programs. One limitation of this study is that the study does not offer insight into training programs or attributes of the programs to highlight possible reasons for these distinctions in teacher outcomes.

In a further study of teacher preparation and subject matter pedagogy training, researchers Ingersoll, Merrill, & May (2014) examined the effects of pedagogical courses within a teacher training program and their effects on teacher attrition using a nation data set on teachers in the US (the Schools and Staffing Survey 2003-2004 and the Teacher Follow-up Survey 2004-2005). Authors found that the type of training, degree type, certification and well as other characteristics (such as academic ability) had limited influence on a teacher’s attrition. However, they noted that those most likely to leave were math and science teachers, who had more content specific courses in their subjects but had fewer pedagogy courses. Their findings also showed that those without strong pedagogical courses were three times more likely to leave the profession (at the 0.001 level).

Authors argued that their study suggests that content alone is not sufficient for teacher attrition but should be paired with pedagogical expertise.

Although most studies use student achievement scores to test the effects of a teacher’s training in pedagogical content knowledge, one study also examined a student’s interest in the subject (Keller, Neuman, & Fischer, 2017). Authors examined effects of a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge using a rich dataset that combined teacher pedagogical content knowledge in physics, videotapes of instruction, student achievement data, and teacher and student surveys on motivation and interest in the subject. Findings showed that student achievement and interest were correlated with r=0.25 at the pre-test and r=0.33 for the post-test at the 0.001 level. Furthermore, results also showed that a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge was predictive of student achievement (with an effect of 0.44 of a standard deviation), and teacher motivation was predictive of student interest (with an effect of 0.53). However, a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge in physics was not related to teacher motivation, and a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge did not have a relationship to student interest in physics.

In a similar study, author Preston (2017) examined the relationship between components of teacher training programs (such as content courses, pedagogy courses, and seminar) and student achievement for middle grade students in reading and math. Preston (2017) found few meaningful results, except that subject matter course work was negatively related to student achievement. The author noted that an additional one-hour credit hour course in math content had a decrease of 0.0043 standard deviations (at the 0.065 level) in student achievement and an additional three-hour course in math content had a decrease of 0.0129 standard deviations. The author noted that math teachers take additional courses in mathematical content, suggesting that teachers could be missing other important courses that influence a teacher’s effectiveness.