Why – and How – Should We Measure Instructional Quality?
tional quality requires not only the identification of teaching practices that successfully promote students’ learning, but also to have a clear understanding of what may prevent successful integration of practices that are known to be effective. In the words of Archer et al. (2015), “Teaching and learning will not improve if we fail to give teachers high-quality feedback based on accurate assessments of their instruction as measured against clear standards for what is known to be effective” (p. 1). A critical concern for those who desire to measure teaching quality is to be clear about for whose sake this is being done. Who will have access to the knowledge produced? Who is asking for this knowledge? What may be considered legitimate ways of using, for example, detailed data over teachers’ variation in classroom instruction? Even with a general consensus on the fact that the quality of teachers’ instruction is essential for student learning, measuring the quality of teachers’ performance, through assessment of the quality of their instruction, is a muchdebated topic. To search for evidence of teachers’ impact on their students’ learning inevitably involves questions of both researcher ethics and work ethics. In the American context, where teachers are increasingly evaluated, many questions have been raised about weather teachers’ classroom practices should be subjected to systematic attempts to assess quality: There is no shortage of debate and opinion on the challenges and promises of teacher performance evaluation, with interests weighing in on all sides— unions seeking protection of members from undue harm; reformers advancing a good argument for the need to use metrics as levers for workforce development and improvement; teachers pressing for fair and reliable systems and meaningful feedback and support; and parents and members of the public wanting better schools for all students. (Pianta & Kerr, 2015, p. 583) In other contexts where the use of teacher performance measures are less familiar – for example, the Nordic countries – it is essential that the import of new research methods and a new research rationale of teaching quality does not automatically import the ethical tension referred to here by Pianta and Kerr.
THEORETICAL CHALLENGES Although scholars agree that measuring teaching quality has proven difficult, there is also a certain consensus around key factors that have proven critical when assessing teaching quality. Analyses suggest that there are strong commonalities
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