Attribution Error And The Quest For Teacher Quality
230 Source:2016 Release of Journal Citation Reports, Source: 2015 Web of Science Data This item requires a subscription to Educational Researcher. Full Text (PDF) Reviews/Essays: Mary M. Kennedy Attribution Error and the Quest for Teacher Quality Educational Researcher November 2010 39: 591-598, doi:10.3102/0013189X10390804 Abstract Full Text Full Text (PDF) To view this item, select one of the options below: Sign In Already an individual subscriber? If so, please sign in to Educational Researcher with your User Name and Password. Sign In User Name Password Remember my user name & password. Forgot your user name or password? Can't get past this page? Help with Cookies. Need to Activate? Purchase Short-Term Access Pay per Article - You may purchase this article for US$36.00. You must download your purchase, which is yours to keep, within 24 hours. Regain Access - You can regain access to a recent Pay per Article purchase if your access period has not yet expired. OpenAthens Users Sign in via OpenAthens : If your organization uses OpenAthens, you can log in using your OpenAthens username and password. Contact your library for more details. List of OpenAthens registered sites, including contact details. Login via Your Institution Login via your institution : You may be able to gain access using your login credentials for your institution. Contact your library if you do not have a username and password. Subscribe/Recommend Click here to subscribe to the print and/or online journal. Click here to recommend to your library. Search this journal Advanced Journal Search » This Article doi: 10.3102/0013189X10390804 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER November 2010 vol. 39 no. 8 591-598 Show PDF in full window Abstract Full Text » Full Text (PDF) Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Load patientINFORMation Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Scopus Citing articles via Web of Science Citing articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Kennedy, M. M. Search for related content Related Content Load related web page information Journal Home Subscriptions Archive Contact Us Table of Contents HOME ALL ISSUES FEEDBACK SUBSCRIBE RSS EMAIL ALERTS HELP Copyright © 2016 by American Educati
JournalPublication Date: 2010-NovPages: 8Abstractor: As ProvidedReference Count: 51ISBN: N/AISSN: ISSN-0013-189XAttribution Error and the Quest for Teacher QualityKennedy, Mary M.Educational Researcher, v39 n8 p591-598 Nov 2010Social psychologists are persuaded that researchers as well as laymen tend to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the influence of http://edr.sagepub.com/content/39/8/591.full.pdf+html situations on observed behavior. The author of this article suggests that education researchers and policy makers may be overestimating the role of personal qualities in their quest to understand teaching quality. In their effort to understand classroom-to-classroom differences http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ911191 in student learning, they may focus too much on the characteristics of teachers themselves, overlooking situational factors that may have a strong bearing on the quality of the teaching practices we see. The author reviews some of these situational forces.Descriptors: Personality Traits, Teacher Effectiveness, Psychologists, Researchers, Teaching Methods, Teacher Characteristics, Elementary Secondary Education, Instructional Effectiveness, Educational Change, Error PatternsSAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://sagepub.comPublication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion PapersEducation Level: Elementary Secondary EducationAudience: N/ALanguage: EnglishSponsor: N/AAuthoring Institution: N/AIdentifiers: N/A Privacy | Copyright | Contact Us | Selection PolicyJournals | Non-Journals | Download | Submit | Multimedia
Official/Staff College or University Educator Engaged Citizen or Close Blogs Collaboratory Impact Supports & Services Search CTQ Search Search About Donate Employment News Resources HomeBlogsThe Collaborateurs Error in the quest for teacher quality Posted by John Holland on Sunday, http://www.teachingquality.org/content/blogs/john-holland/error-quest-teacher-quality 01/30/2011 Jose, You make some really great points about what needs to happen to transform policy making to create a shared accountability system. I think some of your thoughts about lack of trust arise from fundamental errors in perception of policy makers. Your post dovetailed with an article I was reading in Educational Researcher by Mary M. Kennedy about the overestimation of the importance of individual teacher traits to student outcomes. The article Attribution Error and attribution error the Quest for Teacher Quality (PDF) describes how attribution error, the overestimation of teachers’ individual characteristics on their behavior, is so widespread that it is not even considered in most estimates of teacher effectiveness. The idea that teacher quality, and teaching quality are not necessarily the same is an idea that could change the course of policy making in America. After all, high concept reforms like Teach for America, (TFA) rely on the idea that if attribution error and we can just get really smart young people in front of poor kids we can make serious gains in student achievement. Most value-added approaches to accountability are created with the intention of controlling for student factors and teacher factors, not situational factors. They don’t necessarily address the quality of the structural support of education in a community or even a building. Our friend and Teaching 2030 colleague, Renee Moore, talks about how equity as an educational outcome can’t be addressed through teachers alone. It has to happen in the policies, funding, and approaches we adopt to create reforms. Factors that contribute to attribution error are: False perceptions One of my favorite examples of this is when an outside oberserver sees a student sitting by themselves. A policy maker might think, “The teacher must have put them their for being bad” but, what if the student actually asked to be moved there because she knows she is easily distracted by her peers. Inaccurate expectations Most of policy makers ideas about what good and bad teaching looks like are based on experiences they had when they were children. This leads to skewed expectations. When we are kids, great teachers were wonderful, bad ones evil. We never saw when a good one had extensive training and a participated in a community of lea