Observer ratings of instructional quality: Do they fulfill what they promise?

Praetorius, Anna‐Katharina; Lenske, Gerlinde; Helmke, Andreas

doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2012.03.002

Cited by 79 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Particularly, teachers with a high level of PCK are able to devise instruction in a way that is challenging but also supportive , a feature of instruction which is called cognitive activation Praetorius et al, 2012). Therefore, in the present study the impact of physics teachers' PCK on students' achievement is addressed as well as whether this effect is mediated by cognitive activation as the explanatory instructional feature.…”

Section: The Present Study: Aims and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…This is reflected in items for rating the perceived cognitive challenge in teachers' tasks from the students' perspective (e.g., sample item in Kunter et al, 2008, "Our mathematics teacher asks us to explain our thought processes thoroughly," p. 473). Cognitive activation may also be assessed by direct rating of teachers' tasks and questions, for example, based on classroom observations Praetorius, Lenske, & Helmke, 2012). Both perspectives seem to converge (Clausen, 2002) providing evidence that cognitively challenging instruction prompts high levels of cognitive activation in students.…”

Section: Instructional Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cognitive activation as a part of instructional quality refers to the degree of cognitive demands required of students within one lesson that facilitate meaningful learning and understanding of subject-related contents and concepts . Cognitive activation can be assessed by direct rating of teachers' tasks and questions by analyzing the complexity of the content of teachers' (written) tasks and questions (Neubrand, Jordan, Krauss, Blum, & L€ owen, 2013), or based on classroom observations Praetorius et al, 2012). Because the level of complexity and its assessment is inextricably linked to subject matter and understanding thereof (e.g., Lee & Liu, 2010), cognitive activation was assessed by analyzing teachers' tasks via expert ratings based on the video-taped physics lessons.…”

Section: Instrumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The impact of physics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and motivation on students’ achievement and interest

2016

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This paper examines students' achievement and interest and the extent to which they are predicted by teacher knowledge and motivation. Student achievement and interest are both considered desirable outcomes of school instruction. Teacher pedagogical content knowledge has been identified a major predictor of student achievement in previous research, whereas teacher motivation is considered a decisive factor influencing students' interest. So far, however, most research either focused on knowledge or motivation (both on the students' as well as the teachers' side), rarely investigating them together or examining the instructional mechanisms through which the supposed effects of teacher knowledge and motivation are facilitated. In the present study, N ¼ 77 physics teachers and their classes in Germany and Switzerland are investigated utilizing a multi-method approach in combining data obtained from testinstruments (teacher pedagogical content knowledge, student achievement) and questionnaires (teacher motivation, student interest, student perceived enthusiastic teaching) as well as videotaped instruction (cognitive activation rated by observers). Multi-level structural equation modeling was used to support the assumptions that teacher pedagogical content knowledge positively predicted students' achievement; the effect was mediated by cognitive activation. Teachers' motivation predicted students' interest which was mediated by enthusiastic teaching as perceived by students. Neither did teacher pedagogical content knowledge predict students' interest, nor teacher motivation students' achievement. This implies that in order to improve students' cognitive as well as affective outcomes, both teachers' knowledge but also their motivation need to be considered. motivation need to be considered.

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Section: The Present Study: Aims and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Instructional Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Instrumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The impact of physics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and motivation on students’ achievement and interest

2016

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“…Hattie 2009;Kane et al 2012;Rivkin et al 2000;Seidel and Shavelson 2007). One approach for assessing the quality of instruction is to use ratings by external observers, which are often based on classroom videos and have been repeatedly shown to have predictive value regarding student learning, at least when scores of different observers and/or observations are averaged (Kane et al 2012;Praetorius et al 2012Praetorius et al , 2014. Over the past several decades, various instruments for observational measures have been developed, which strongly differ in their underlying theories of instructional quality, the scope of teaching aspects assessed, the dimensionality of measured constructs, and subject-relatedness (e.g.…”

Section: Instructional Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Who sees the most? Differences in students’ and educational research experts’ first impressions of classroom instruction

2020

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In recent decades, the assessment of instructional quality has grown into a popular and well-funded arm of educational research. The present study contributes to this field by exploring first impressions of untrained raters as an innovative approach of assessment. We apply the thin slice procedure to obtain ratings of instructional quality along the dimensions of cognitive activation, classroom management, and constructive support based on only 30 s of classroom observations. Ratings were compared to the longitudinal data of students taught in the videos to investigate the connections between the brief glimpses into instructional quality and student learning. In addition, we included samples of raters with different backgrounds (university students, middle school students and educational research experts) to understand the differences in thin slice ratings with respect to their predictive power regarding student learning. Results suggest that each group provides reliable ratings, as measured by a high degree of agreement between raters, as well predictive ratings with respect to students' learning. Furthermore, we find experts' and middle school students' ratings of classroom management and constructive support, respectively, explain unique components of variance in student test scores. This incremental validity can be explained with the amount of implicit knowledge (experts) and an attunement to assess specific cues that is attributable to an emotional involvement (students).

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“…The way teachers interact with students affects students' achievement (Praetorius et al 2012). Scaffolding and more specifically contingent support represents intervening in such a way that the learner can succeed at the task (Mattanah et al 2005).…”

Section: Scaffolding and Achievementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of scaffolding in the classroom: support contingency and student independent working time in relation to student achievement, task effort and appreciation of support

et al. 2015

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Teacher scaffolding, in which teachers support students adaptively or contingently, is assumed to be effective. Yet, hardly any evidence from classroom studies exists. With the current experimental classroom study we investigated whether scaffolding affects students' achievement, task effort, and appreciation of teacher support, when students work in small groups. We investigated both the effects of support quality (i.e., contingency) and the duration of the independent working time of the groups. Thirty social studies teachers of pre-vocational education and 768 students (age 12-15) participated. All teachers taught a five-lesson project on the European Union and the teachers in the scaffolding condition additionally took part in a scaffolding intervention. Low contingent support was more effective in promoting students' achievement and task effort than high contingent support in situations where independent working time was low (i.e. help was frequent). In situations where independent working time was high (i.e., help was less frequent), high contingent support was more effective than low contingent support in fostering students' achievement (when correcting for students' task effort). In addition, higher levels of contingent support resulted in a higher appreciation of support. Scaffolding, thus, is not 123Instr Sci (2015) 43:615-641 DOI 10.1007/s11251-015-9351-z unequivocally effective; its effectiveness depends, among other things, on the independent working time of the groups and students' task effort. The present study is one of the first experimental study on scaffolding in an authentic classroom context, including factors that appear to matter in such an authentic context.

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Observer ratings of instructional quality: Do they fulfill what they promise?

Cited by 79 publications

References 43 publications

The impact of physics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and motivation on students’ achievement and interest

The impact of physics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and motivation on students’ achievement and interest

Who sees the most? Differences in students’ and educational research experts’ first impressions of classroom instruction

The effects of scaffolding in the classroom: support contingency and student independent working time in relation to student achievement, task effort and appreciation of support

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