Teaching Research Spotlight

Teacher Working Conditions 

NEA is providing this online venue highlighting professional research on best practices in educational issues.

Any discussion of student achievement must include teacher working conditions. Research makes clear that learning conditions in the classroom are of more importance to a teacher than salary, benefits, school locale, or even parent involvement.

Teachers did not join the teaching ranks to become wealthy. Teachers have chosen this profession because they have an intrinsic ability to convey information to others and they have a genuine love for the students they teach.

As part of its work with teacher working conditions, North Carolina has done much in the study of the relationship between the learning environment and student achievement. Some of the more significant findings from the North Carolina work indicate the importance of—

• Professional collegiality
  
  
• Time allotted for teachers to meet and plan together
  
  
• Teachers being provided the time necessary to adequately understand each individual student they teach

Once we are able to address issues such as these, we will have much greater success in students selecting teaching as a career, in retaining teachers in the profession once we have them, and finally being able to truly focus on what matters: teacher quality and student achievement.

Richard Baumgartner, president of the Fairfax Education Association, points to teacher time as the key factor in improving working conditions. "The demands on teacher time have progressed incrementally over decades. As a profession, we have allowed external forces to slowly erode one of the most vital prerequisites to providing sound instruction to our students: quality time," he says. "It is now incumbent upon us as a professional association to recognize the cost of time issues to both our students and our profession and to act upon this knowledge."

 
Related Links
 
» Teacher Working Conditions Toolkit —A toolkit that builds on the teacher working conditions research. Center for Teacher Quality, North Carolina.

» Teacher Working Conditions Are Student Learning Conditions (  PDF, 426 KB, 4pp)—The November 2004 issue of the bimonthly publication Focus of Teaching Quality in the Southeast: Best Practices & Policies. The Southeast Center for Teaching Quality.  

» North Carolina Initiative on Teacher Working Conditions—Web site of the first state to study teacher working conditions by surveying teachers themselves. Includes survey and research findings. Office of the Governor of North Carolina.

» Governor's Teacher Working Conditions—Sponsoring groups, resources, survey results from the governor's initiative. Governor of North Carolina. 

» Where Teachers Are Central to Improving Schools—Main page of Center for Teacher Quality (North Carolina) Web site.        

» Workplace Matters: Teacher Quality, Retention, and Effectiveness  ( PDF, 505 KB, 32pp) by Susan Moore Johnson. Describes workplace conditions that support effective instruction and professional growth according to recent research. NEA 2006. 

» Elementary and Secondary Education Teacher Working Conditions—Trends in teacher salaries. Science and Engineering Indicators–2002. National Science Foundation.

» What Teachers Want - In North Carolina and a growing number of states, improving working conditions has become a science. NEA Today, March 2007.

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