Using Generic and Content-Specific Instruments in Studying Instruction: Do They Delineate Teaching Quality Similarly?

• In Event: 30.080 - Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: 30.080-6 - How Do Teachers Measure Up? Tools and Approaches for Measuring Teacher Quality

Abstract

Recent years have seen the development and employment of a plethora of observation instruments—both generic and content-specific—to capture instructional quality. These instruments are, however, largely used in isolation from each other. In this exploratory study, we investigated whether using a combination of one generic and one content-specific instrument would lead to similar classifications of teachers according to the quality in their lessons. Toward this end, we analyzed lessons on the same content taught by two different triads of teachers. Our analysis suggested that, had both observation instruments been used, the teachers would largely be clustered in different levels of teaching quality. We discuss the implications of these findings for both summative and formative teacher evaluation purposes.

Authors

• Maria Papacharalambous, University of Cyprus

• Charalambos Y. Charalambous, University of Cyprus