Evaluating the Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance of Instructional Quality in Mathematics Education Across Countries

Does School-Level Instructional Quality Matter for School Mathematics Performance? Comparing Teacher Data across Seven Countries

“…They also do not consider instructional quality as a key construct [65,139,140]. Our findings enrich the study of disciplinary climate from a teacher's perspective and extends, e.g., earlier studies-such as that by Liu, Yang Hansen [52]-that primarily identified classroom disciplinary climate as a dimension at the teacher level. For the first time, our study used TALIS teacher data to define schools' overall mathematics instructional quality and documented the associations with school performance.…”

“…Firstly, instructional quality dimensions seem to differ when building on data from teachers or students [34,35,51]. For instance, the dimension of student-oriented instruction is captured when building on student ratings [49,52]. Furthermore, dimensions of clarity of instruction, feedback, and assessment are put forward as critical dimensions when building on teacher and school evaluator data [50,[53][54][55].…”

“…Secondly, specific school subjects seem to put forward other teaching demands, resulting in other instructional dimensions being emphasised [32,33,56]. For example, in mathematics education, studies identified the dimensions of student-oriented instruction from student data and classroom disciplinary climate from both teacher and student perspectives [49,52]. Thirdly, researchers stress that participants from different national and cultural backgrounds might interpret the concept differently [57], resulting again in different frameworks of instructional quality being characterised [40,52,58].…”

“…For example, in mathematics education, studies identified the dimensions of student-oriented instruction from student data and classroom disciplinary climate from both teacher and student perspectives [49,52]. Thirdly, researchers stress that participants from different national and cultural backgrounds might interpret the concept differently [57], resulting again in different frameworks of instructional quality being characterised [40,52,58]. Most international large-scale studies adopt a generic conception of instructional quality that is considered to be independent of country-specific school characteristics.…”