A study on school performance in terms of some teacher characteristics

One of the important factors that affect student achievement is teacher characteristics. Therefore, there exists much research that investigates the relationship between student achievement and teacher characteristics in the literature. However, none of the research examines all characteristics of a qualified teacher together. The relevant literature generally focuses on the characteristics that are easy to measure. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between some teacher characteristics and student achievement based on the TIMSS 2011 data set on Turkey. In this study, the data set on Turkey is analyzed by dividing the schools into three groups as low-, middle- and high-performing schools according to the mean science achievement of students instead of utilizing the TIMSS benchmarks. So that, it is investigated whether teacher characteristics vary by school level. This study utilizes the International Database (IDB) analyzer which is a plug-in for the SPSS, and developed by the IEA Data Processing and Research Centre. As a result of the analysis, it is seen that students whose teachers have an experience of at least 10 years have higher mean achievement in science, and that students at high-performing schools have teachers with an experience of at least 10 years across Turkey. The rate of students whose teachers feel satisfied with their profession is higher in Turkey than the TIMSS average. Moreover, it is revealed that the mean achievement of students whose teachers feel satisfied with their profession is higher than the others at middle- and high-performing schools. The rate of students whose teachers have participated in professional development activities in various topics is significantly higher at high-performing schools. However, this rate is remarkably below the TIMSS average. At the fourth-grade level, teachers feel confident about “applying various problem solving strategies” and “providing challenging tasks for capable students”. At the eighth-grade level, on the other hand, they feel less confident about “providing challenging tasks for capable students”.