Teaching styles and achievement: Student and teacher perspectives

Using data from a Spanish assessment program of fourth-grade pupils, we analyze to what extent using certain teaching practices and materials in class is related to achieve- ment in maths and reading. We distinguish using traditional and modern teaching styles. As a novelty, we measure in-class work using two dierent sources of information -teacher and students. Our identication strategy relies on between-class within-school variation of teaching styles. We nd that modern practices are related to better achievement, specially in reading, while traditional practices, if anything, are detrimental. There are dierences depending on the source of information: the magnitude of coecients is larger when practices are reported by students. These ndings are robust to considering al- ternative denitions of teaching practices. We obtain heterogeneous eects of teaching styles by gender and type of school but only when using students' answers. Our nd- ings highlight the importance of the source of information, teacher or students, to draw adequate conclusions about the eect of teaching style on achievement.