Theoretical and methodological challenges in measuring instructional quality in mathematics education using classroom observations

Schlesinger, Lena; Jentsch, Armin

doi:10.1007/s11858-016-0765-0

Cited by 89 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…There is long-standing controversy over whether teacher or student ratings should be used to assess instructional quality (Desimone et al 2009;Marsh et al 2012;Scherer et al 2016;Schlesinger and Jentsch 2016;Wagner et al 2015). Our results do not resolve the controversy given that they indicate that there are problems with both approaches.…”

Section: Measurementcontrasting

confidence: 76%

Final Remarks

Gustafsson

Nilsen

2016

IEA Research for Education

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Section: Measurementcontrasting

confidence: 76%

Final Remarks

Gustafsson

Nilsen

2016

IEA Research for Education

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“…In several countries, a teacher of grade four mathematics will also be teaching the same class other subjects. It may be that some of the teachers responded to this list of questions without having mathematics instruction in mind, which may cause validity problems (Schlesinger and Jentsch 2016).…”

Section: Limitations Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A long-standing controversy exists whether teacher or student ratings describe instructional quality more reliably and/or more validly (Desimone 2011;Schlesinger and Jentsch 2016;Wagner et al 2015). Current research understanding suggests that the correlation between these two approaches is only moderate and that their relation with student achievement differs.…”

Section: Conclusion and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Blömeke

Olsen

Suhl

2016

IEA Research for Education

115

103

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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.

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“…This gives support to the discipline of making specific non-judgemental brief-but-vivid accounts of incidents that others can identify, rather than mixing observation and assumption-based opinion (Mason 2002). Schlesinger & Jentsch (2016) conclude that there is huge variation and no common agreement as to what constitutes quality instruction in mathematics. They also found issues concerning reliability and validity in the reports of observations that they studied.…”

Section: Q3 How Do the Different Facets Of Teachermentioning

confidence: 94%

“…But then this is partly due to the fact that teacher competence itself is not well-specified, and is indeed highly context dependent, influenced by both observer and situation, as two of the papers note (Schlesinger & Jentsch 2016;Hoth et al 2016b).…”

Section: What Do the Papers Contribute To The Original Questions?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception, interpretation and decision making: understanding gaps between competence and performance—a commentary

Mason

2016

ZDM Mathematics Education

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perspectives are combined or are the connecting processes examined. There is an urgent need for methodologically innovative studies that examine competent teaching under controlled conditions and with sample sizes sufficient for multivariate and multidimensional analyses. Such laboratory-like data could provide important information on the internal structure of teacher competence and the many steps mediating the transformation of competence into performance.The four research questions intended to guide the papers in this special issue are as follows Q1. How do teachers who possess all of the resources belonging to professional competence integrate these, such that the underlying competence emerges in performance? Q2. What is the internal structure of teacher competence? Is it organized into domain-specific components or are there other organizing principles governing its structure? Q3. How do the different facets of teacher competence play out in the classroom? Do the teacher's observable acts relate differently to the cognitive, affective, or motivational-volitional characteristics? Q4. Is teacher competence directly predictive of student achievement? Or are other processes and context-conditions mediating the transformation of competence into performance so that an indirect model is better suited to depict the relationship? I begin by considering the contributions of the papers to addressing these questions, in their own terms. I then consider some underlying assumptions, both to the original questions and to the research reported in the papers, which leads me to address the connection between researchers' Abstract This papers comments on the contributions of ZDM Mathematics Education dedicated to the theme "Perception, interpretation and decision making: understanding the missing link between competence and performance". The papers within this issue are brought together under the perspective of the stated aims of this issue, and then questions are raised about assumptions underlying methods of the studies and the overall enterprise. It becomes clear that teacher competence is a shining example of how in mathematics education both researchers and teachers need to develop a shared approach to negotiating meaning of terms used partly technically so that the use of the same terms for different things and different terms for essentially the same thing is reduced. The commentary aims to contribute to a joint understanding of the concepts used, so that researchers can communicate effectively with each other and so that their findings can support teacher development.

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Theoretical and methodological challenges in measuring instructional quality in mathematics education using classroom observations

Cited by 89 publications

References 36 publications

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

Perception, interpretation and decision making: understanding gaps between competence and performance—a commentary

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