This review of recent research on the relationship between teachers’ experience and their effectiveness in raising pupils outcomes may be of interest to school leaders and professionals with responsibility for training teachers.
Does teaching experience increase teacher effectiveness? A review of the research
Synopsis
Asking whether teachers continue to improve in their effectiveness as they gain experience, this paper aims to answer by critically reviewing recent literature on the effect of teaching experience on pupil outcomes in K-12 public schools in the United States.
The authors’ main conclusions are that teaching experience is positively associated with pupil achievement gains throughout a teacher’s career, and that gains in teacher effectiveness associated with experience are most steep in teachers’ initial years, but continue to be significant as teachers reach the second, and often third, decades of their careers.
It also suggests that as teachers gain experience, their pupils not only learn more, as measured by standardized tests, but are also more likely to do better on other measures of success, such as school attendance. Teachers’ effectiveness increases at a greater rate when they teach in a supportive and collegial working environment.