| Richard Ingersoll
University of Georgia
The causes and consequences of out-of-field teaching in high school
FINAL REPORT:
This article is concerned with the phenomenon of out-of-field teaching -- teachers assigned to teach subjects for which they have inadequate training and qualifications. Over the past several years, the problem of out-of-field teaching has become a prominent topic in the realm of educational policy and reform. But, despite this attention there remains a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding this issue. One of the key areas of misunderstanding concerns the empirical measurement of this phenomenon.
There are a large number of different ways of determing and assessing the extent to which teachers are assigned to teach in fields for which they do or do not have adequate qualifications. Measures of out-of-field teaching vary according to the standard by which they define a "qualified" teacher. There are differences according to how measures define the boundaries of teaching fields and how they distinguish among one field and another. Measures vary as to whether all or part of those teaching in any given field are included in the analysis. Measures of out-of-field teaching also differ according to whether they focus on the numbers of teachers instructing out of their fields, on the numbers of students taught by out-of-field teachers, or on the number of classes taught by out-of-field teachers. Finally, measures vary according to which school grade levels are included in the analysis.
These choices and differences are consequential. Over the past decade, analysts have developed and presented well over a dozen different measures of out-of-field teaching, each of which yields different estimates ofthe extent of underqualified teachers in classrooms. On one end of the spectrum, there are measures that "define the problem out of existence." On the other end, there are measures showing the problem is overwhelming, Aithough it has now become standard practice for major education reports, forums, documents and studies to include measures and indicators of out-of-field teaching in their assessments of educational systems, as of yet there is little understanding of the variety of measures available, nor their differences and limitations.
This article presents, compares and evaluates a wide range of different measures of out-of-field teaching that have been developed and used over the past decade in order to clarify the strengths and limits of each. The objective is to aid researchers in their decisions as to which is best to use in their analyses and to help users to interpret what any given measure actually tells us about the extent to which there exists underqualified teaching in classrooms.
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