Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers

C. Kirabo Jackson, Elias Bruegmann

NBER Working Paper No. 15202
Issued in August 2009
NBER Program(s):Economics of Education, Labor Studies

Using longitudinal elementary school teacher and student data, we document that students have larger test score gains when their teachers experience improvements in the observable characteristics of their colleagues. Using within-school and within-teacher variation, we further show that a teacher's students have larger achievement gains in math and reading when she has more effective colleagues (based on estimated value-added from an out-of-sample pre-period). Spillovers are strongest for less-experienced teachers and persist over time, and historical peer quality explains away about twenty percent of the own-teacher effect, results that suggest peer learning.

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w15202

Published: C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann “Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. 1.4 (2009): 85­108. citation courtesy of

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