The purpose of the paper is to analyse the relationship between teaching methods and academic performance among students in secondary education in Norway.

Lecture style presentations are often regarded as old-fashioned (Schwerdt and Wuppermann 2011). In recent years, teachers have been encouraged to increase the variety of teaching methods used in the classroom, in particular teaching methods that emphasize student cooperation, such as working together in pairs and groups or project working. However, few studies have analysed empirically the relationship between teachers’ teaching methods and students’ academic performance.

This paper examines how cooperative teaching methods and more traditional teaching methods relate to student’s academic performance. The analyses are based on national registers and survey data.

Several recent studies point to the relevance of studying teaching methods for understanding variation in student’s academic performance (Aslam and Kingdon 2011, Schwerdt and Wuppermann 2011). Traditionally, teaching methods have been the subject of classroom studies, which have primarily focused on the connection between teaching methods and student’s behavior, and less on how teaching methods relate to students’ academic performance. The relatively few existing studies on teaching methods and academic performance are inconclusive.  Some studies support the use of cooperative teaching methods (Slavin, Lake and Groff, 2009; Slavin, Lake, Davis and Madden, 2011). However, a recent study have found positive effects of lecture style teaching on students’ academic performance, whereas problem solving was negatively related to students’ academic performance (Schwerdt and Wuppermann, 2011).

The existing studies on teaching methods and academic performance are commonly based on teacher’s reports on their teaching methods. In contrast to this, the current paper draws on the pupils’ perceptions of teaching methods.

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