Teachers’ perceptions of what constitutes high quality or effective teaching are often
collected in surveys, instruction logs,37 and interviews.38 Such logs and their validity
and reliability have been questioned because studies tended to fail to pinpoint the
relative significance of specific practices over time.39 It seems that the teachers and
researchers do not consistently interpret the key terms and in the same way.40
As well as finding out what factors teachers think constitute effective teaching
practices, it is also of interest to establish how teachers perceive their own
effectiveness and whether this changes over time. Do more experienced teachers
perceive that their own effectiveness improves over the course of their career? What
factors influence their perceptions of their effectiveness?
A more global perception as a measure of teachers’ perceived effectiveness (i.e. self
perception of teachers of their own practice) and a measure of relative effectiveness
based on value-added analyses of pupil progress were used to study teacher
effectiveness in a study of ‘Variations in teachers’ lives and work and their effects on
pupils (VITAE)’.41 This VITAE research found that teachers’ effectiveness is not simply
a consequence of age or experience. Indeed, they identified mid-career teachers as
tending to show greater effectiveness with some decline for teachers who had been
in post for longer periods. Some other cross-sectional studies at different levels
of education also suggest that teaching effectiveness eventually tends to decline
with longer experience/older age. Instead, it was found that teacher effectiveness is
influenced by variations in their work, lives and identities that shape their sense of
professional identity in different professional life phases. In turn, teachers’ sense of
professional identity influences their relative commitment and resilience as well as
their capacities to manage these variations to sustain their teaching effectivene
