Teachers' Beliefs About Good Teaching: Implications for Educational Policy

• In Event: The Politics of Teaching

Abstract

In this paper we examined teachers' beliefs about effective pedagogical approaches using exploratory factor analysis and analysis of variance of an online survey of K-12 public school teachers. We found that teachers distinguished between relationship-emphasized and content-emphasized pedagogical approaches and strongly preferred the relationship-emphasized one, regardless of their background and demographics. We established that despite the content-emphasized approaches promoted for over 40 years by Federal educational policies, respondents associated very good teachers with a relationship-emphasized approach characterized by caring and supportive practices and strong subject matter knowledge. Teachers' political beliefs did not significantly influence their pedagogical approach, with conservative and progressive teachers valuing relationship-emphasized methods. These findings have significant policy relevance to this year’s theme of “Research, Remedy, and Repair.”

Authors

• Gustavo E. Fischman, Arizona State University

• Margarita Pivovarova, Arizona State University

• Eric Haas, California State University - East Bay