UNITAS

Unterricht aus Schülersicht: Potentiale und Grenzen bei der Erfassung der Unterrichtsqualität von Lehrkräften

01/01/2020 to 31/12/2022

Student ratings are an important way to capture key quality aspects of teaching quality, such as cognitive activation, classroom management, or learning support. In fact, students are regularly asked about the quality of teaching in order to examine the relationship between teaching and learning achievement, to assess the effectiveness of teacher education and training programs, or to investigate whether interventions can improve the quality of teaching. Despite this widespread use and the wide acceptance of student ratings in research, central questions about their validity, however, remain unanswered. For this reason and based on data from a longitudinal large-scale study that is currently being conducted at the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, the proposed project pursues to answer three research questions: (1) Which teaching quality aspects can be distinguished in student ratings for a large number of theoretically derived aspects of teaching quality (Question about factor structure) and to what extent do the results differ across subjects (mathematics and German language), school tracks and grade levels? (2) To what extent do student ratings of teaching quality reflect teacher-specific aspects of teaching or teacher-independent aspects in terms of students’ classroom characteristics (Question about the basis of students’ perceptions)? (3) Finally, we are interested in whether variation in student ratings within classrooms can provide important information about teachers’ differentiation and their adaption to the individual needs of students (Question about heterogeneity of ratings).