We extend this line of research by investigating teacher career and background characteristics, personal resources, and school and district resources that predict an array of instructional practices identified on a mathematics-specific observational instrument, MQI, and a general instrument, CLASS. To understand these relationships, we use correlation and regression analyses. For a subset of teachers for whom we have data from multiple school years, we exploit within-teacher, cross-year variation to examine the relationship between class composition and instructional quality that is not confounded with the sorting of "better" students to "better" teachers. We conclude that multiple teacher- and school-level characteristics--rather than a single factor--are related to teachers' classroom practices.

Using data from elementary mathematics teachers, we examine the correspondence between self-reports and observational measures of two instructional dimensions--reform-orientation and classroom climate--and the relative ability of these measures to predict teachers' contributions to student learning.

In this study, we use value-added scores and video data in order to mount an exploratory study of high- and low-VAM teachers' instruction. Specifically, we seek to answer two research questions: First, can expert observers of mathematics instruction distinguish between high- and low-VAM teachers solely by observing their instruction? Second, what instructional practices, if any, consistently characterize high but not low-VAM teacher classrooms? To answer these questions, we use data generated by 250 fourth- and fifth-grade math teachers and their students in four large public school districts.Preliminary analyses indicate that a teacher's value-added rank was often not obvious to this team of expert observers.

While research has generated substantial information regarding the characteristics of effective mathematics teachers and classrooms, scholars have rarely tested multiple aspects of teachers or teaching within a single study. Without testing multiple variables simultaneously, it is difficult to identify specific aspects of mathematics teachers and teaching that may be particularly impactful on student learning, and to understand the degree to which these characteristics are related to one another. This plenary draws on data from a three-year study measuring multiple components of teacher and teaching quality to investigate these issues.