The Impact of Early Childhood Teachers' Generic and Domain-Specific Instructional Quality on Children's Outcome

• In Event: Factors Contributing to Young Children's Learning in Mathematics

Abstract

In the past few years, studies investigating instructional quality mainly considered generic aspects while domain-specific factors were neglected. The present investigation explores the relationship between early childhood teachers’ domain-specific and generic instructional quality and children’s learning growth in mathematics. We sampled 202 children and 25 early childhood teachers. Due to clustered data, we applied multilevel analysis. The results show that instructional quality predicts children’s learning growth in mathematics when domain-specific and generic aspects are considered. Our results imply that, beyond generic aspects, domain-specific aspects are already relevant at an early stage of mathematical learning. Consequently, strengthened awareness for relevant aspects of instructional quality influencing children’s learning is needed in order to grant educational equity for all children.

Authors

• Lara Marie Pohle, Humboldt-Universität zu, Berlin

• Georg Hosoya, Freie Universität Berlin

• Lars Jenssen, Humboldt University - Berlin