Educator Experience

The other day, I was comparing notes with someone about how long we both worked in K-12 education. I had a rough idea of the number of years but I had to pull out my phone and use an age calculator to get the exact number of years. If my career were a person, it could vote, legally drink, and rent cars (without a surcharge) in all 50 states.

I spent more than twenty years in K-12 education in Wisconsin and then moved to Ohio and tried a few different districts and levels before settling into what I hope is a fairly permanent role. During that time of frequent job changes, I felt that the Instructional Hierarchy applied to job mastery (Haring et al., 1978). In each role, I progressed through acquisition, fluency, and generalization where I could apply what I knew to the new role. 

However, with experience, moving through acquisition took less time and building fluency also was faster, but the steps were necessary. There is an issue of knowing just enough to be dangerous when one assumes they can perform a job based on prior knowledge rather than knowing how things work in the new system.

Changing roles later in a career provides a great reminder of what it is like to be “new”. This year, I had many conversations with early career educators (psychs, speech pathologists, and teachers). One common theme I detected was how early career educators often question their competence relative to their knowledge or experience compared to older and more seasoned educators. 

Does comfort and routine mean that those with more experience are better performers on the job? Just because someone has experience does not automatically mean they are competent or one of the best performers in their system. 

What does the research indicate about years of experience and job quality? Does more years in a role usually indicate a higher level of competence? Or, is there a point where experience hits a diminishing point of returns? 

 A brief prepared by Dr. Jennifer King Rice (2010) titled The Impact of Teacher Experience: Examining the Evidence and Policy Implications provided an extensive summary of the research conducted to that point. 

Key takeaways from this summary included some of the following: 

• The impact of experience is strongest during the first three years of teaching

• Gains are largest in elementary and middle schools and math

• Teachers with less than 3 years of experience are more likely to work in high-poverty schools

• There was a double disadvantage for high-poverty schools where there were more inexperienced teachers and experienced teachers were less effective

• After a few years, performance gains appear to level off

On one hand, there is a benefit to experience but on the other hand, those benefits diminish after a few years. The brief was from 2010 so I was curious about more recent findings. 

A more recent paper from 2019 reviewed over 30 studies and the authors found that teacher experience is positively associated with student achievement throughout much of a teacher’s career (Podolsky et al., 2019). However, beyond that, the authors also noted that teachers performed best when in supportive environments with the ability to work with the same grade or subject peers. The authors also mentioned that growth was evident across an entire career for teachers although some papers they reviewed indicated teacher effectiveness declined later in careers (20 to 28 years in). Generally, students appeared to gain from more experienced teachers.  

In another paper, a group looked at the effectiveness of teachers regarding years of experience (Graham et al., 2020). Interestingly, they found no evidence of lower effectiveness for teachers with 0-3 years but they did see a potential decline in teacher quality around years 4-5. A possible reason for this could be that teachers in the first three years receive more mentoring and guidance compared to those with more than three years of experience. As mentioned in Podolsky et al. (2019), a strong supportive network could be more impactful than on-the-job experience. However, the more one knows, the easier it may be to assume you know the “right way” to do things resulting in careless errors or use of ‘low-value practices’ and a decrease in one’s effectiveness.

Again, this was not an exhaustive search; however, I did not find an abundance of papers regarding experience, performance, or student outcomes (disclaimer- it is summer). The research mentioned did not convince me that experience is the only way to increase competence or the appearance of being a competent educator. Conversely, experience is not “nothing” and appears to increase one’s effectiveness over time.

If I were to advise early career educators, I would share that the first three years are a time of great growth and encourage them to build a network to rely on after year three. My mentor always mentioned that the training we were provided was designed to make us competent, not expert school psychologists. Excellence was something we were instructed to strive to attain throughout our careers.

If experience helps but is not a magic bullet for substantially improved performance, I wondered what would increase someone’s capital in their first few years. From a bit of digging, engagement seemed to be the more critical element.

Engagement is next. What is the state of workplace engagement? How do those who are engaged appear to others at work? If asked by an early career educator what makes the biggest impact regarding how they are viewed, respected, or sought for advice/input, I am leaning toward a response that being engaged in the job and building expertise in areas of interest may pay dividends. Not that we want our newest educators to bite off more than they can chew or burn out, but encouraging them to explore interests or build expertise in areas could fast-forward them to being relied upon, valued, and respected, sooner rather than later.

References:

Graham, L. J., White, S. L. J., Cologon, K., & Pianta, R. C. (2020). Do teachers’ years of 

experience make a difference in the quality of teaching? Teaching and Teacher 

Education, 96, 1-10.

Haring, N.G., Lovitt, T.C., Eaton, M.D., & Hansen, C.L. (1978). The fourth R: Research in the

classroom. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co.

Podolsky, A., Kini, T., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2019). Does teaching experience increase 

teacher effectiveness? A review of US research. Journal of Professional Capital and 

Community, 4(4), 286–308.

Rice, J. K. (n.d.). The Impact of Teacher Experience.