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Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers (2009)
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| Venue: | American Economic Journal: Applied Economics |
| Citations: | 61 - 6 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Jackson09teachingstudents,
author = {C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann},
title = {Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers},
journal = {American Economic Journal: Applied Economics},
year = {2009},
pages = {85108}
}
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Abstract
Using longitudinal elementary school teacher and student data, we document that students have larger test score gains when their teachers experience improvements in the observable characteristics of their colleagues. Using within-school and within-teacher variation, we show that a teacher’s students have larger achievement gains in math and reading when she has more effective colleagues (based on estimated value-added from an out-of-sample pre-period). Spillovers are strongest for less experienced teachers and persist over time, and historical peer quality explains away about 20 percent of the own-teacher effect, results that suggest peer learning. (JEL I21, J24, J45) Economists have long been concerned with human capital spillovers, given that these have strong implications for the optimal distribution of workers both within and across firms. When workers and their colleagues are complementary inputs in production, improvements in coworker quality may increase a worker’s own productivity. There is evidence of such spillovers. Workers ’ wages are higher
Keyphrases
peer learning longitudinal elementary school teacher worker productivity teacher student strong implication jel i21 experienced teacher coworker quality test score gain student data effective colleague observable characteristic human capital spillover within-teacher variation teacher experience improvement complementary input own-teacher effect out-of-sample pre-period historical peer quality worker wage achievement gain optimal distribution
