Researchers agree that teachers are one of the most important school-based resources in determining students' future academic success and lifetime outcomes, yet have simultaneously had difficulties in defining what teacher characteristics make for an effective teacher. This chapter reviews the large body of literature on measures of teacher effectiveness, underscoring the diversity of methods by which the general construct of "teacher quality" has been explored, including experience, professional knowledge, and opportunity to learn. Each of these concepts comprises a number of different dimensions and methods of operationalizing. Single-country research (and particularly research from the United States) is distinguished from genuinely comparative work. Despite a voluminous research literature on the question of teacher quality, evidence for the impact of teacher characteristics (experience and professional knowledge) on student outcomes remains quite limited. There is a smaller, but more robust set of findings for the effect of teacher support on opportunity to learn. Five measures may be associated with higher student achievement: teacher experience (measured by years of teaching), teacher professional knowledge (measured by education and self-reported preparation to teach mathematics), and teacher provision of opportunity to learn (measured by time on mathematics and content coverage). These factors provide the basis for a comparative crosscountry model. Keywords Opportunity to learn • Teacher education • Teacher experience • Teacher quality • Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2.1 Defining Teacher Effectiveness Researchers agree that teachers are one of the most important school-based resources in determining students' future academic success and lifetime outcomes (Chetty et al. 2014; Rivkin et al. 2005; Rockoff 2004). As a consequence, there has been a strong emphasis on improving teacher effectiveness as a means to enhancing student learning. Goe (2007), among others, defined teacher effectiveness in terms of growth in student learning, typically measured by student standardized assessment

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