Liebowitz, DavidZhang, Congli2024-01-092024-01-092024-01-09https://hdl.handle.net/1794/29163Experimental evidence of the effects of teacher characteristics and teacher-student relationships on student performance is limited and even more scarce in education contexts outside of the United States. In this dissertation, I implement quasi-experimental research designs in two separate studies to investigate teacher-characteristic effects and teacher-student-relationship effects in the population of Chinese junior high school students. I draw analytic samples from a two-year, student-level, nationally representative dataset and leverage a national trend of random teacher-student assignments to investigate teacher effects on student performance as well as subject-specific self-concept. I estimate teacher effects as the within-school, between-teacher variance components of teachers’ value added to student outcomes over a school year. In my first study, I find that, in China, more years of education or of teaching experience generally does not have a causal impact on student learning. Further, early career (less than three years) teachers consistently outperform their colleagues at the same school. Moreover, I detect some heterogeneity in teacher characteristic effects across subject areas: students benefit from teachers’ graduate-level degree and Education major in Chinese (language arts) but learn less from math teachers who hold a graduate-level degree, with the effect sizes medium to large in magnitude. My second study first adds novel evidence about a national policy initiative in China: assigning a formal advisor role to a core-content teacher. I find that students taught in their content area by their advisor had better relationships with their teacher, and students’ self-concept in language subjects (Chinese, and English as the nationally mandated second language) and their math and English test scores were higher. In Chinese and English, the enhanced relationship between teachers and students caused by being taught by advisor consistently improved students’ performance and the effect sizes were large in magnitude (although the estimates on Chinese score were imprecise). Together, these two articles contribute to the limited teacher effects literature in Chinese education context and importantly, provide implications for what teacher-level factors do or do not contribute to student performance to educators and policymakers worldwide.en-USAll Rights Reserved.ChinaEducationStudent outcomesTeacher characteristicsTeacher effectsTeacher student relationshipElectronic Thesis or Dissertation