UC Riverside

This study examines associations between teacher effectiveness in improving both students’ academic achievement and social-emotional skills. Using hierarchical linear modeling, a specific set of teacher practices were used to examine teacher effectiveness in both domains. Our results show that the average academic achievement residuals do not correlate with the average social-emotional residuals. However, some teaching characteristics—including teacher expectation, teacher-student relationship, and classroom discipline—significantly related to both academic achievement gains and social-emotional skill development, while some other practices significantly associated with only one domain. These findings suggest that even though there is no necessary association between teacher effectiveness in improving academic achievement along with social-emotional skills in general, teachers’ instructional and social-emotional practices can make differences in students’ academic and social-emotional development.