Project Profile: "Causal Inference in Instructional Workforce Research"

The project aims to synthesize existing studies of the connection between teacher's credentials and educational background, on one side, and the quality of their practice and effects on student achievement, on the other side. The project is gathering all studies of this issue, regardless of their origin quality, or method. The goal is to produce a meta-analysis not limited by research method.

Intellectual Merit
The study will create improved evaluation capacity building. By concentrating on research on teacher qualifications, things like whether people have majored in particular subjects, achieved high grade point averages, been granted certification in specific areas. The studies that will be evaluated will include a relationship of teacher qualifications to student achievement.

Broader Impact
This project has the potential to substantially enhance future research and evaluation and will provide a framework for designing and interpreting non-experimental studies and estimating their validity. It will provide empirical advances by estimating the magnitudes of differences among effect estimates generated under various design conditions.