The article argues that the traditional conception of teacher effectiveness, focused on the teaching performance of individual teachers in relation to student cognitive outcomes, has limitations primarily because it does not recognise broader roles and responsibilities. A case study of a primary school staff attempting to generate criteria for effectiveness was conducted in order to develop a complementary approach. The criteria generated cover most of the characteristics of the effective teacher in the literature. Also the criteria generated in the case study school correlated strongly with those of a nationally representative sample. Implications for teacher effectiveness research are drawn.

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