How Many Classes and Students Should Ideally be Sampled When Assessing the Role of Classroom Climate via Student Ratings on a Limited Budget? An Optimal Design Perspective

Abstract

A central question in educational research is how classroom climate variables, such as teaching quality, goal structures, or interpersonal teacher behavior, are related to critical student outcomes, such as students’ achievement and motivation. Student ratings are frequently used to measure classroom climate. When using student ratings to assess classroom climate, researchers first ask students to rate classroom climate characteristics and then aggregate the ratings on the class level. Multilevel latent variable modeling is then used to determine whether class-mean ratings of classroom climate are predictive of student outcomes and to correct for unreliability so that the relations can be estimated without bias. In this article, we adopt an optimal design perspective on this specific strategy. Specifically, after briefly recapping a prominent model in climate research, we show and explain (a) how statistical power can be maximized by choosing optimal numbers of classes and students per class given a fixed budget for conducting a study and (b) how the budget required to achieve a prespecified level of power can be minimized. Moreover, we present an example from research on teaching quality to illustrate the procedures and to provide guidance to researchers who are interested in studying the role of classroom climate. Also, we present a Shiny App that can be used to help find optimal designs for classroom climate studies. The app can be accessed at https://psychtools.shinyapps.io/optimalDesignsClassroomClimate

Construction of Measurement and Investigation of the Role of Classroom Climate on Students' Knowledge and Attitudes in the Learning Process

“…Apart from that, the discussion process is open, there are no opinions that bring down other opinions, thereby making students feel valued in the learning process. Several aspects that influence the level of reliability of measuring classroom climate are the gender composition in the class, the level of student activity, individual perceptions of learning opportunities, the socioeconomic level of students, the level of student knowledge about citizenship education, and differences in views about class material (Ingemarson et al, 2020;Zitzmann et al, 2022). Teachers must pay attention to this aspect in creating an open classroom climate and encouraging students to be active.…”

“…The study also analyses two factors, namely school factors and classroom factors which have a relationship with socio-political studies (Shewark et al, 2018;Verlie & Blom, 2022). Based on theory, classroom climate is defined as the interaction between the teacher and other classroom members and what is most important is the impact of teaching, not who and what is taught to students (Khalfaoui et al, 2021;Zitzmann et al, 2022). From this study, it can be concluded that an open classroom climate will encourage students to give their opinions on controversial issues in accordance with better knowledge, beliefs and abilities so as to minimise alienation and cynicism regarding the field of citizenship education among students.…”

“…Multilevel consideration of classroom climate demonstrated better performance of the developed model predicting students' knowledge of citizenship in a sample of students. Classroom climate is assessed using two methods, namely assessing perceptions at the individual level and student perceptions at the class or school level (Ingemarson et al, 2020;Zitzmann et al, 2022). At the student level, open classroom climate assessments are used as a benchmark for individual reporting.…”

A Bayesian EAP-Based Nonlinear Extension of Croon and Van Veldhoven’s Model for Analyzing Data from Micro–Macro Multilevel Designs

“…To conclude, we showed that Croon and van Veldhoven's EAP-based approach for analyzing micro-macro multilevel designs can be extended to interaction and quadratic effects, and we hope that the article will contribute to the use of this approach in organizational research. The approach can easily be implemented in any statistics software, such as SPSS, SAS or R. Finally, we would like to stress that the application of this approach is not limited to the organizational context and that it may also be an interesting option in other areas of multilevel research in which latent means are used (e.g., education sciences, psychology; [14,57]). in order to obtain the posterior.…”

Towards an Integrated Perspective of Teachers’ Technology Integration: A Preliminary Model and Future Research Directions

“…For instance, the availability of infrastructure (tablets, internet access) and time constraints could determine how technology can be implemented in the classroom to foster individual or collaborative learning processes (see Backfisch, Lachner et al, 2021, for empirical evidence). At the same time, dynamic characteristics of the class and students could also influence teaching quality (Zitzmann et al, 2022).…”