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Examining the Phenomenon of “Teaching Out-of-field” pp 21–51Cite as

Measuring Out-of-Field Teaching

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Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the empirical measurement of the phenomenon of out-of-field teaching—teachers assigned to teach subjects for which they have inadequate training and qualifications. In the 1990s, this problem began to receive much attention and it became common for major education reports and studies to include indicators of out-of-field teaching in their assessments of educational systems. However, there are a large number of different ways of defining and assessing the extent to which teachers are assigned to teach in fields for which they are inadequately qualified and, there has been little understanding of the variety of measures available, nor their differences and limitations. This chapter seeks to address this issue by describing, comparing and evaluating a wide range of different measures of out-of-field teaching that have been developed. My central point is that how one chooses to define and measure out-of-field teaching makes a difference for the amount of out-of-field teaching one finds. My objective is to clarify the strengths and limits of different types of measures in order to aid researchers in their decisions as to which is best to use in their analyses, and to help users interpret what any given measure actually indicates about the extent to which underqualified teaching exists in classrooms.

Background research for this paper was partly supported by a grant from the American Educational Research Association which receives funds for its “AERA Grants Program” from the National Science Foundation and the National Center for Education Statistics (U.S. Department of Education) under NSF Grants #RED-9452861. Opinions reflect those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Unlike other occupations and professions, empirical assessment of teachers’ qualifications is a well-worn path. There are large numbers of empirical studies, going back decades, devoted to evaluating the effects of preservice teacher education and preparation on teacher performance (see, e.g., Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2014; Greenwald et al. 1996; Rivkin 2007). Typically, such studies try to assess the relationship between various measures of teachers’ qualifications and various measures of the performance of those teachers’ students. The findings are mixed and numerous commentators and researchers have concluded that there is little or no empirical evidence supporting the use of teacher licenses, credentials, education degrees, and certificates. But contrary to such skeptics of teacher education, a number of studies have indeed found teacher education, preparation, and qualifications, of one sort or another, to be significantly and positively related to student achievement.

    For example, at the high school level (Clotfelter et al. 2010) used data on statewide end-of-course tests in North Carolina to examine the relationship between teacher credentials and student achievement. They found that teacher credentials, particularly state licensure and certification, affected student achievement in systematic ways, with magnitudes large enough to be policy relevant. Their findings suggest that the uneven distribution of teacher credentials, by the race and socioeconomic status of high school students, contributes to achievement gaps in high schools.

    At the elementary school level (Riordan 2009), analyzing data from National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K), examined the cumulative effects of having certified teachers on students’ mathematics and reading achievement. Her results showed that students who were taught by certified teachers scored significantly better than those taught by uncertified teachers, and that this had a cumulative effect; in other words, for every year from kindergarten through 3rd grade that a student had a teacher who was certified in elementary education, there was a significant increase in the student’s mathematics and reading scores. The effects were greater in reading than in mathematics, but of a strong magnitude in both.

    For a middle school example, in a multilevel analysis of 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, Raudenbush et al. (1999) found that teacher education in mathematics (as measured by a major in mathematics or in mathematics education) was “consistently positively and highly significantly related to mathematics proficiency” in 8th-grade students. Likewise, in our own multilevel analyses of NAEP data, using school fixed-effects methods, we found that teacher preparation in both subject-matter and teaching methods was positively and significantly related to the proficiency of 8th-grade students in several fields. For instance, in analyzing 2003 NAEP data, we found that 8th-grade students whose mathematics teachers had a regular teaching certificate in mathematics, or had a major or minor in mathematics or in mathematics education, scored significantly higher on an 8th-grade mathematics test. We found similar results in our analyses of NAEP data for 8th-grade reading, science, geography, and history (Ingersoll et al. forthcoming).

  2. 2.

    A widely cited and used data source on teacher’s qualifications is the National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (NSSME). NSSME is a survey focusing on science and mathematics educational practices in public schools in the U.S. periodically conducted from 1977 to 2018 by Horizon Research with support from the National Science Foundation. NSSME is a smaller and more focused data source than SASS. For reports presenting data from NSSME, see e.g., Weiss (1994), Weiss et al. (2001), Horizon Research (2013). For an earlier widely cited report that uses NSSME data on teacher quality, see Oakes (1990).

  3. 3.

    In Fig. 2.2, regular certification is defined as all those with regular, standard, full, advanced, or probationary certification. It does not count those with temporary, alternative or provisional certificates. Probationary refers to the initial license issued after satisfying all requirements except completion of probationary period.

  4. 4.

    See Bobbitt and McMillen (1995) for a more comprehensive presentation of estimates for these three types of measures.

  5. 5.

    See Bobbitt and McMillen (1995) for more comprehensive documentation of the gap between main-field-only and other measures.

  6. 6.

    This measure refers to all classes in the following 8 fields: mathematics, science, social studies, English/language arts, foreign languages, vocational education, arts/music, and physical education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Richard M. Ingersoll

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  1. Richard M. Ingersoll
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Correspondence to Richard M. Ingersoll .

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  1. Deakin University , Waurn Ponds, VIC, Australia

    Linda Hobbs

  2. University of Duisburg-Essen , Duisburg, Germany

    Günter Törner

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Ingersoll, R.M. (2019). Measuring Out-of-Field Teaching. In: Hobbs, L., Törner, G. (eds) Examining the Phenomenon of “Teaching Out-of-field”. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3366-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3366-8_2

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