Do Teachers' College Majors Affect Students' Academic Achievement in the Sciences? A Cross-Subfields Analysis with Student-Teacher Fixed Effects

Atsushi Inoue () and Ryuichi Tanaka
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Atsushi Inoue: Nippon Institute for Research Advancement

No 15101, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We examine whether and how teachers' major fields of study affect students' achievement, exploiting within-student variation across subfields in natural science (i.e., physics, chemistry, biology, and Earth science). Using middle-school students' data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and controlling student-teacher fixed effects, we find that teachers with college majors in natural sciences improve students' achievement of subfields in natural sciences corresponding to their subfields of college majors. Teaching practices explain about half of the effect of teachers' major fields. Most of the effects of teaching practices are accounted for by teachers' preparation for teaching science topics. The results are robust to potential endogenous matching between students and teachers.

Keywords: college major; natural science; teacher; education; middle school; TIMSS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H75 I21 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2022-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
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Forthcoming - published in: Education Economics , 2023, 31(5), 617-631

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Journal Article: Do teachers’ college majors affect students’ academic achievement in the sciences? A cross-subfields analysis with student-teacher fixed effects (2023)
Working Paper: Do Teachers' College Majors Affect Students' Academic Achievement in the Sciences? A Cross Subfields Analysis with Student-Teacher Fixed Effects (2022)
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