Relation of Student Achievement to the Quality of Their Teachers and Instructional Quality

Abstract

This chapter examines how crucial input and process characteristics of schooling are related to cognitive student outcomes. It was hypothesized that teacher quality predicts instructional quality and student achievement, and that instructional quality in turn predicts student achievement. The strengths of these relations may vary across countries, making it impossible to draw universal conclusions. However, similar relational patterns could be evident within regions of the world. These hypotheses were investigated by applying multi-level structural equation modeling to grade four student and teacher data from TIMSS 2011. The sample included 205,515 students from 47 countries nested in 10,059 classrooms. Results revealed that teacher quality was significantly related to instructional quality and student achievement, whereas student achievement was not well predicted by instructional quality. Certain characteristics were more strongly related to each other in some world regions than in others, indicating regional patterns. Participation in professional development activities and teachers' sense of preparedness were, on average, the strongest predictors of instructional quality across all countries. Professional development was of particular relevance in Europe and Western Asian/Arabian countries, whereas preparedness played an important role in instructional quality in South-East Asia and Latin America. The ISCED level of teacher education was on average the strongest predictor of student achievement across all countries; this characteristic mattered most in the Western Asia/Arabia region.

Relationships Between Instructional Alignment, Time, Instructional Quality, Teacher Quality, and Student Mathematics Achievement

“…In this chapter, we address our second research question, namely what is the relationship between different types of teacher quality and instructional metrics and student achievement? Our study extends the work of Blomeke et al (2016), who analyzed the TIMSS 2011 grade four data to explore the relationship between teacher quality variables and student outcomes. The analysis undertaken by Blomeke et al (2016) incorporated similar constructs to those explored in Chap.…”

Classification of Students In Terms of Student’s, Teacher’s and Instructional Qualifications Based on TIMSS-2015

“…As TIMSS provides information related to student outcomes, teacher qualifications, instructional qualifications and school qualifications at national and international levels, it gives researchers opportunities to investigate the relations among these qualifications (Nilsen, Gustaffson and Blömeke, 2016). The relations among these factors have also been shown by the studies (Akyüz, 2006;Berberoğlu, Çelebi, Özdemir, Uysal and Yayan, 2003;Blömeke, Olsen and Suhl, 2016;Bos and Kuiper, 1999;Gustafsson and Nilsen, 2016;Houseand Telese, 2008;Rutkowski and Rutkowski, 2016) conducted on this topic. In the literature there are theoretical models developed to explain how these factors influence student outcomes.…”

Cultural Variation in the Effectiveness of Feedback on Students’ Mistakes

“…Students are given achievement tests in mathematics and science as well as a background questionnaire including some items on teachers' use of various instructional practices. Such data can be related to student outcomes to estimate the association between instructional practices and achievement (e.g., Blömeke et al, 2016;Eriksson et al, 2019). Specifically, the 2015 wave of TIMSS 2 included the item "My teacher tells me how to do better when I make a mistake."…”

“…When studying antecedents of student achievement it is common to control for socio-economic status and gender. Following some previous research on TIMSS data (Blömeke et al, 2016;Eriksson et al, 2019), we used the response to the item "About how many books are there in your home?" as a proxy for socio-economic status, henceforth referred to as SES.…”