Teacher effectiveness: a review of international literature and its relevance for improving education in Latin America

This working paper contains a review of recent international literature on themes related to teacher effectiveness. The first section presents a working definition of the term as used in this review. Section 2 covers general educational needs, the state of the teaching profession, and the status of teacher training in Latin America.1 Section 3 presents several different approaches to defining and measuring teacher effectiveness. Section 4 reviews findings from the literature on how to improve teacher effectiveness, and section 5 applies this information to the Latin American context. The paper concludes with a proposed definition of teacher effectiveness.