TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Inoue, Atsushi
AU  - Tanaka, Ryuichi
        TI  - Do Teachers' College Majors Affect Students' Academic Achievement in the Sciences? A Cross-Subfields Analysis with Student-Teacher Fixed Effects
        PY  - 2022/Feb/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 15101
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp15101
        AB  - We examine whether and how teachers' major fields of study affect students' achievement, exploiting within-student variation across subfields in natural science (i.e., physics, chemistry, biology, and Earth science). Using middle-school students' data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and controlling student-teacher fixed effects, we find that teachers with college majors in natural sciences improve students' achievement of subfields in natural sciences corresponding to their subfields of college majors. Teaching practices explain about half of the effect of teachers' major fields. Most of the effects of teaching practices are accounted for by teachers' preparation for teaching science topics. The results are robust to potential endogenous matching between students and teachers.
        KW  - college major
KW  - natural science
KW  - teacher
KW  - education
KW  - middle school
KW  - TIMSS
        ER  -