Lecturing Style Teaching and Student Performance

Although there is a common believe that better teachers produce better students, there is no unambiguous scientific evidence that teacher characteristics are causally related to student performance. This raises the question whether the things that teachers do in class are more important than the characteristics they possess. In the Netherlands teachers tend to give less lectures in front of the class, and instead `choose' a more personal approach, because it is believed that this positively affects student performance. This study examines whether the percentage of time that teachers spend on lecturing in front of the class influences the performance of Dutch students. We find no empirical evidence that this percentage is positively or negatively related to the performance of students, and so, we do not find that a more personal approach affects student performance positively.