Knowledge about teacher effectiveness

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Abstract
In the last issue of the BJTE two reviewers looked at the recent research report by Neville Bennett on teaching style and pupil achievement. Their comments were probably representative of opinion in the research community but seem to be at odds with the views of the media. This is not surprising, of course, as our editorial commented. But now that the seven days sensationalism has disappeared we can perhaps take a cooler look at the question, using as a focus the paper by Flanders that was promised. There is no suggestion here that we should ignore the implications of media‐generatededucationaltruths. Indeed, there is little doubt that researchers need to be much more alive to danger of unscrupulous manipulation of their findings. However, we think it useful to take up the question of the way different methods of teaching can influence children's learning so that readers not centrally committed to this field of enquiry may get a clearer view of the problem and may also be made aware of the vast amount of work that has taken place in this area. This article by Flanders should help to bring home the extreme complexity of work in the field and give readers some idea of the uninformed naivety of some recent arguments on the subject. The paper was delivered as part of a symposium at the American Educational Research Association in 1973. Its mode of operation is to develop a critique of a book by Barak Rosenshine, Teaching Behaviours'and Student Achievement {Rosenshine 1971a), and some other work by Rosenshine in collaboration with Furst {Rosenshine and Furst 1971, 1973). Rosenshine is a leading worker in the field of classroom studies. However, as Flanders indicates, the problems of this kind of research are quite enormous and Rosenshine's reviews have not always come to grips with this complexity. In the process of analysing the flaws in Rosenshine's reviews Flanders deals with many of the difficulties of working in the field of classroom studies and it is because of this analysis of many of the key issues that we believe the paper will be of considerable interest to readers. We shall of course be very happy to consider for publication any further contributions to the debate on this extremely important issue.

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