A longitudinal Study of Distal and Proximal Indicators of Teacher Effectiveness and Students' Mathematics Competence in Germany

Recent research on teacher effectiveness has turned its focus from teacher factors (distal indicators) toward teaching factors (proximal indicators) because teaching factors are proximal to the instruction process. However, current study argued that the importance of distal indicators cannot be undermined. Therefore, the present study investigated both distal indicators and proximal indicators of mathematics teaching in a longitudinal manner using German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) data. Students’ mathematics competence was measured at the beginning of grade 5 and then, at the beginning of grade 7. Contrary to expectation, the study found that distal indicators are stronger predictor of student mathematics competence than proximal indicators. Furthermore, study also found that generally, German teachers lack in effectiveness and no significant differences were found among teacher effectiveness across academic and vocational school tracks which is thought provoking because teachers of academic school tracks are trained rigorously than their counterparts.