Teaching styles and achievement: Student and teacher perspectives

Abstract

We analyze the relationship between the use of modern and traditional teaching styles and the achievement in math and reading in primary education. As a novelty, we explore whether that relationship is different if we use teachers or students as source to measure in–class work. We find that who reports the practices matters. Teamwork and class discussions—modern practices—are strongly related to better achievement, while rote learning and individual work—traditional practices—to lower achievement. But that association is only significant when using students’ reports. Teaching styles are differently related to achievement along several dimensions—math and reading, boys and girls, public/private students—but again basically when we rely on students’ reports. The analysis of the differences in the perspectives does not show conclusive evidence about the student and teacher characteristics that explain those differences. Only being girl or high achiever predicts a lower use of modern practices.