Teachers Make a Difference, What is the research evidence?

My journey this morning takes me from identifying the relative power of the teacher, to a reflection on the qualities of excellence among teachers, and dwells mainly on a study undertaken in the classroom of America’s very best teachers. My search is driven by the goal of ascertaining the attributes of excellence – because if we can discover the location of these goal posts, if we can understand the height of the bar of the goal posts, we then have the basis for developing appropriate professional development, the basis for teacher education programs to highlight that which truly makes the difference, the basis for extolling that our profession truly does have recognisable excellence which can be identified in…