Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

In this volume, five separate studies examine differing aspects of relations between teacher quality, instructional quality and learning outcomes across countries, taking into account context characteristics such as school climate. The 2007 and 2011 TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) cycles provided the research data. These five studies cover grade four or grade eight students and their teachers, including cognitive or affective-motivational learning outcomes. This introductory chapter describes the overall conceptual framework and the research questions posed by each chapter, and outlines the general design features of TIMSS. Key constructs, and common methodological issues among the five studies are discussed, and this introduction concludes with an overview of all chapters.

This chapter examines how crucial input and process characteristics of schooling are related to cognitive student outcomes. It was hypothesized that teacher quality predicts instructional quality and student achievement, and that instructional quality in turn predicts student achievement. The strengths of these relations may vary across countries, making it impossible to draw universal conclusions. However, similar relational patterns could be evident within regions of the world. These hypotheses were investigated by applying multi-level structural equation modeling to grade four student and teacher data from TIMSS 2011. The sample included 205,515 students from 47 countries nested in 10,059 classrooms. Results revealed that teacher quality was significantly related to instructional quality and student achievement, whereas student achievement was not well predicted by instructional quality. Certain characteristics were more strongly related to each other in some world regions than in others, indicating regional patterns. Participation in professional development activities and teachers’ sense of preparedness were, on average, the strongest predictors of instructional quality across all countries. Professional development was of particular relevance in Europe and Western Asian/Arabian countries, whereas preparedness played an important role in instructional quality in South-East Asia and Latin America. The ISCED level of teacher education was on average the strongest predictor of student achievement across all countries; this characteristic mattered most in the Western Asia/Arabia region.

Instructional quality is considered to be an important classroom variable, as it is significantly related to student achievement and motivation in mathematics. Existing studies in educational effectiveness furthermore identified a positive relation between instructional quality and school climate, suggesting that the school environment plays a significant role in teachers’ instructional practices. In order to bring together these two core findings, the relations among different aspects of school climate, instructional quality, and students’ achievement motivation for the TIMSS 2011 grade eight mathematics data sets comprising 50 countries are investigated. In particular, the role of instructional quality as a potential mediator between school climate and student motivation is examined, thereby focusing on three aspects of school climate (emphasis on academic success, safety, and order in schools) and three aspects of achievement motivation (self-concept, intrinsic value, and extrinsic value). In general, there was a significant positive relation between instructional quality and achievement motivation at the classroom level in mathematics; in some countries, a partial mediation of instructional quality between school climate and achievement motivation was apparent. Four main patterns of relations occurred. These findings are discussed with respect to implications for educational effectiveness research.

The aim of the study was to investigate causal effects of aspects of teacher quality and school climate on mathematics achievement through use of country-level longitudinal data. By investigating within-country change over time, biasing influence from omitted variables in the form of fixed country characteristics is avoided, thereby increasing the likelihood of making correct causal inferences. Data from 38 countries participating in both TIMSS 2007 and TIMSS 2011 were analyzed with structural equation modeling techniques, using both latent and manifest variables. The analyses focused aspects of teacher quality (educational level, teaching experience and major academic discipline studied, professional development, and self-efficacy) and an aspect of school climate referred to as school emphasis on academic success (SEAS). Results showed that the teachers’ attained level of education had effects on mathematics achievement. Quite substantial effects of professional development on student achievement were also identified. Teacher self-efficacy, as assessed by self-reports of preparedness for teaching in different domains, showed a weakly positive, but insignificant relation to student achievement. The teacher characteristics years of teaching experience and major academic discipline studied had no effect on student achievement. SEAS did not satisfy ideals of unidimensionality, and only items reflecting parental support for student achievement and students’ desire to perform well were significantly related to student achievement. OECD and non-OECD countries showed similar results and could not be differentiated.

Students gain access to mathematical tasks through reading; consequently, low-performing readers generally perform low in mathematics. High quality instruction might help students develop comprehension strategies for reading mathematics that weakens the relationship between reading and mathematics skills. The main aim of this chapter is to investigate how instructional quality might moderate the relationship between reading and mathematics achievement. Analyzing data from 37 countries and benchmark participants who applied the same sample for TIMSS 2011 and PIRLS 2011, two different models were fitted to the data for each educational system: (1) a two-level confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model for instructional quality and the correlation between instructional quality and reading and mathematics achievement at student and class levels, and (2) a two-level random slopes model in which the slope variation across classrooms was related to class-level instructional quality. In all educational systems, there was a strong positive correlation between reading comprehension and mathematics achievement. Further, a positive relation between instructional quality and mathematics and reading achievement was observed in a number of countries. The analysis of how instructional quality moderated the relationship between mathematics and reading was inconclusive. The influence of reading comprehension on mathematics achievement was significantly moderated by instructional quality in only six countries; nonetheless, the driving hypothesis should not be rejected.

Instructional quality may serve as a protective factor against school bullying victimization internationally. This study investigated this using the data provided by TIMSS 2011 fourth grade students. Given the highly-skewed distribution of the bullying scale and the clustered structure of the TIMSS data, a multilevel (students nested in classes) zero-inflated Poisson regression was used and responses to the bullying items were treated as rough counts. Covariates identified as predicting bullying at the international level were controlled for. Findings from the international model indicate that better instructional quality is associated with lower rates of student self-reported bullying victimization. At the educational-system level findings are mixed. The analysis suggests that bullying begins at an early age and that, at the fourth grade level, bullying victimization is an international phenomenon. Although instructional quality is associated with lower reported bullying victimization rates internationally, cross-system differences point to the important fact that instructional quality will not, in and of itself, globally lower rates of bullying in schools.

This book contributes to educational policy, the field of educational effectiveness and practice. In this chapter, the findings from the five studies are summarized and discussed. After a comprehensive examination of the methodological issues related to measurement, causality, analysis, and design, implications for educational practice are proposed.