School Quality From Principal and Teacher Perspective: A Multiple Trait Multiple Informant Study

• In Event: AERA Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: Division A - Administration Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

The validity of data used for educational policy strongly depends on how is asked (e.g., school leaders or teachers). Therefore, in this study we address the question of whether and to what extant principals and teachers agree when rating various dimensions of the quality of their schools (e.g., teacher cooperation). Using hierarchical data of 2380 teachers nested within 116 principals we perform cross-level group measurement invariance models (Kim et al., 2018) to estimate the latent mean differences and the latent correlations (at school-level) between principal and teacher ratings. Results show that principals rate the quality of their schools exceedingly stronger than their teachers. Thus, our results indicate that multiple informant studies are needed to obtain valid data for decision making.

Authors

• Christoph Helm, Johannes Kepler University of Linz
  Presenting Author

• Stephan Gerhard Huber, University of Teacher Education Schwyz
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rolf Strietholt, IEA Hamburg
  Non-Presenting Author