An Economic Model of Teaching Effectiveness

The literature on the determinants of good teaching performance has been largely devoted to empirical measurement. A complete review of the publications in this area would require at least an entire issue the size of this journal. Yet, it is virtually impossible to discover attempts to derive hypotheses about the determinants of good teaching from explicit models of behavior. This has led researchers into the trap of exploring only the empirical determinants of good teaching performance. Typically, the results of student evaluations are correlated with affective personality traits of the teachers, with peer evaluations of psychological compositions, or even with the results of various psychological tests. Examples are the works of Robert Isaacson et al., Frank Costin et al., and Wilbert McKeachie et al. In most of these studies, no substantive conclusions are reached regarding the determinants of effective teaching. In the few studies which do contain significant findings, the independent variable in question is difficult to explain as a direct determinant of teaching effectiveness. For example, Isaacson et al. find that virtually the only statistically significant determinant of effective teaching is the personality characteristic which they label "culture." This may imply that simply wearing a tweed jacket and taking up pipesmoking is sufficient to improve teaching.' This paper takes a somewhat different approach to the analysis of teaching. Assume that the individual in question wishes to maximize teaching effectiveness. Clearly, there are constraints on this maximization process. One must necessarily be the time budget constraint. A second constraint, however, adds a good deal of interest to the model. This constraint is best described as the bundle of characteristics available to the individual. These characteristics could be termed the components of the individual's personality. Such attributes include physical appearance, psychological makeup, speaking ability, and a myriad of other variables. Thus, this model bears a resemblance to the standard economic models of monopolistic competition (see A. Michael Spence). Before proceeding to a formal statement of the problem, a philosophical issue must be addressed. What is meant by "teaching effectiveness"? Generally, this is interpreted as maximizing student evaluations of teachers. However, this is clearly not always equivalent to maximizing student learning. Unfortunately, the latter variable is difficult (but not impossible) to measure. (Preand posttesting with standardized tests is becoming increasingly accepted, for example). The meaning of teaching effectiveness in this paper must, unfortunately, remain ambiguous. Some teachers (concerned, perhaps, with obtaining tenure) will interpret good teaching as obtaining good evaluations, the criterion by which they are judged. Others may take a more eclectic viewpoint. Since the problem below is an individual maximization problem, the precise definition of effective teaching may simply vary from individual to individual (see W. R. Allen). Formally, this problem is exactly analogous to one first addressed by Kelvin Lancaster. He assumes that the consumer attempts to maximize satisfaction through purchase of bundles of attributes. Each commodity is possessed of certain of these characteristics. By consuming various combinations of these commodities, the consumer is *Assistant professor, department of economics, and Director, Center for Economic Education, California State University-Hayward. I would like to thank Alex Cassuto, Nancy Sanders, and an anonymous referee for helpful discussion. 'In a previously unreported experiment in the department of economics, California State UniversityBakersfield, faculty members were required to wear coats and ties in classes. It was subsequently observed that teaching evaluations improved. Unfortunately, no detailed statistical results of this experiment are available for analysis.