Why – and How – Should We Measure Instructional Quality?
ematics, or science. Using achievement gains in reading and mathematics may be justified because of their reliability, their proven correlation with progress in other subject domains, and for the profound importance of reading and mathematics to learning in many other fields of knowledge. Yet such measures still represent only a small share of all the esteemed benefits expected from education. A broad understanding of teaching quality, or of teaching effectiveness, cannot be delineated only through its contribution to learning of reading and mathematics, but must also consider to what extent the teaching promotes good judgment in ethical dilemmas, democratic ideals, ability to connect historical events and structures, capacity for analyzing scientific arguments, long-term motivation for learning and intellectual growth etc. Even if studies should prove that reading comprehension correlates well with many of these loftier educational goals, that in itself does not prove that they are attributable to the same teaching practices. Therefore, the idea of teaching quality must be maintained as a multi-layered concept that requires consideration from a number of different perspectives. Moreover, correlating prevalent features of teacher’s instruction with measures of their students’ learning is certainly relevant, and pinpoints quality in terms of effectiveness and contribution to learning, but it only represents one of the possible ways of conceptualizing quality. In addition to effective strategies for extending curriculum content, teachers must also make wise decisions about what to teach and when, to consider students’ well-being and motivation for learning, to support disadvantaged students in order to improve equity in education and so on. These factors all pertain to the problem of how to measure quality in teaching. Research on teaching quality also needs to investigate, for instance, the extent to which students’ own perception of teaching quality relates to achievement-based identification of effective instructional features (see e.g., Fauth et al., 2014). Similarly, it will be necessary, especially when moving between national educational contexts, to examine the extent to which different measures of achievement, or of student perceptions of quality, correlate with assumed contextual indicators of teaching effectiveness (see e.g., Grossman et al., 2014).
THE CONTENT OF THE BOOK Thus, while there is broad agreement that teaching quality matters and that teachers’ instructional repertoires in classrooms are key requisites for students’ learning, measuring instructional quality has proven to be challenging. Scholars around the world strive to agree on the ‘what’, ‘how’, and even ‘why’ when measuring teaching quality. Against this backdrop, the Nordic Centre of Excellence: Quality in Nordic
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