Student perceptions of assessment and student self-efficacy in competence-based education

The purpose of this study was to provide insight into the interplay between student perceptions of competence-based assessment and student self-efficacy, and how this influences student learning outcomes. Results reveal that student perceptions of the form authenticity aspect and the quality feedback aspect of assessment do predict student self-efficacy, confirming the role of mastery experiences and social persuasions in enhancing student self-efficacy as stated by social cognitive theory. Findings do not confirm mastery experiences as being a stronger source of self-efficacy information than social persuasions. Study results confirm the predictive role of students’ self-efficacy on their competence outcomes. Mediation analysis results indicate that student’s perceptions of assessment have an indirect effect on student’s competence evaluation outcomes through student’s self-efficacy. Study findings highlight which assessment characteristics, positively influencing students’ learning, contribute to the effectiveness of competence-based education. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are indicated.     

The relationship between teacher sign skills and student evaluations of teacher capability

This study examines the extent to which deaf students' perceptions of their teachers' effectiveness and ease of communication in the classroom are related to the teachers' sign skills. Thirty-three faculty, teaching a variety of courses at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), were rated on "teaching effectiveness" and "communication ease" by their students over a 2-year period. Faculty sign proficiency was evaluated independently using the Sign Communication Proficiency Interview (SCPI). Results indicate a moderate relation between students' perceptions of communication ease and teaching effectiveness, and a weak relation of these two variables to the teachers' assessed level of sign skill. The data also show that the students could clearly differentiate three levels of teacher sign skill in the classroom. Results are discussed in relation to the component parts of effective communication from the perspective of students in the classroom.     

Exploring connections between teacher interpersonal behaviour,student motivation and competency level in competence-based learning environments

Learning Environments Research - Studies of connections between teacher behaviour and student outcomes are numerous, but those specifically addressing such connections in a competence-based...     

The contribution of assessment experiences to student teachers' self-efficacy in competence-based education

Earlier research argues that educational programmes based on social cognitive theory are successful in improving students' self-efficacy. Focussing on some formative assessment characteristics, this qualitative research intends to study in-depth how student teachers' assessment experiences contribute to their self-efficacy. We interviewed 15 s year student teachers enrolled in a competence based teacher educational programme. Thematic content analysis results reveal that the assessment characteristics ‘authenticity’ and ‘feedback’ exert a positive influence on student teachers self-efficacy during all phases of the portfolio competence assessment. The results provide a fine-grained view of several types of self-efficacy information connected with these assessment phases.     

Teacher support,student motivation,student need satisfaction,and college teacher course evaluations: testing a sequential path model

Self‐determination theory posits that individuals who have basic psychological needs satisfied while engaging in an activity will be more likely to value and persist in that activity. Scholars in this area have also posited that autonomy‐supportive social contexts are top‐down determinants of individual need satisfaction. To understand better the progression from social to motivational to outcome variables, we tested a four‐step path model within a classroom setting. Data were collected from 220 students in an introductory journalism course, which was subdivided into 14 lab sections. Students were surveyed regarding their feelings about the course, the autonomy support of the instructor, the motivation they felt to engage in the course, and the levels of need satisfaction they experienced. Theoretically‐guided structural equation modeling produced a best‐fitting model in which teacher autonomy support predicted more self‐determined student motivation, which along with teacher autonomy support predicted greater student psychological need satisfaction, which led finally to higher predicted course grades and higher teacher‐course evaluations. Overall, the results replicate and significantly extend previous findings regarding need satisfaction and teacher‐course evaluations. Implications for pedagogy and educational interventions are discussed.     

The quality of student ratings of teacher behaviour

In a research project into the effectiveness of mathematics teaching in the first year of secondary education, external observers and students rated teachers' behaviour. The reliability and validity of both methods were established. The results show that teacher behaviour is assessed well when student ratings are aggregated at the classroom level. The quality of aggregated student ratings is as good as the quality of data from external observers. The predictive validity of aggregated student ratings is higher than the predictive validity of external observations when subject motivation is taken as a dependent variable.     

The Impact of teacher behavior,teacher sex,and student sex upon student self-disclosure

The effects of systematically varied teacher verbal and nonverbal evaluative behavior upon student willingness to self-disclose were studied within an experimental microlesson. Subjects were 126 sixth-grade students who were removed from their classrooms to participate in a vocabulary lesson with one of the four experimental teachers (two male and two female). Within each experimental condition, the teacher employed one of four evaluative styles: (1) verbally and nonverbally positive, (2) verbally positive and nonverbally negative, (3) verbally negative and nonverbally positive, or (4) verbally and nonverbally negative. The data analysis indicated that teachers' verbal behavior influenced self-disclosure. The magnitude of student self-disclosure scores was a direct function of the positiveness of teacher verbal behavior. Nonverbal behavior also influenced self-disclosure, interacting with student sex. This effect varied across individual teachers, however, and no consistent pattern was evident.     

Observational,student, and teacher perspectives on interpersonal teacher behavior: Shared and unique associations with teacher and student emotions

Teachers’ interpersonal behavior in class is important for teacher and student emotions. Often the same rater (either teacher or students) is used to assess both perceptions of teacher behavior and emotions, which makes it vulnerable to common-method bias. Including other perspectives on teacher behavior has been proposed as a solution, but it is unclear to what extent different perspectives are correlated and how to separate their shared and unique variance in explaining emotions. Behavior of 80 teachers was rated from three perspectives (observers, students, and teachers) in terms of Agency (i.e., social influence) and Communion (i.e., friendliness). The three perspectives overlapped more strongly for teacher agency than for communion. Especially for students, teacher communion was a stronger predictor of emotions than agency. Our innovative statistical approach showed that the strong association between ratings of teacher behavior and emotions of the same rater are unlikely to result from common-method bias only.     

Development of student knowledge in competence-based pre-vocational secondary education

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the development of student knowledge in pre-vocational secondary education schools which differ in the manner and extent to which they have implemented characteristics of competence-based education. The implementation of these characteristics was examined using a teacher questionnaire and the development of knowledge was investigated using concept mapping. The results showed that students developed slightly more knowledge in learning situations with fewer characteristics of competence-based education. The organisational characteristics of the learning situations were further found to be distinctive for the development of knowledge.     

Web-based student evaluations of professors: the relations between perceived quality,easiness and sexiness

College students critique their professors' teaching at RateMyProfessors.com, a web page where students anonymously rate their professors on Quality, Easiness, and Sexiness. Using the self-selected data from this public forum, we examine the relations between quality, easiness, and sexiness for 3190 professors at 25 universities. For faculty with at least ten student posts, the correlation between quality and easiness is 0.61, and the correlation between quality and sexiness is 0.30. Using simple linear regression, we find that about half of the variation in quality is a function of easiness and sexiness. When grouped into sexy and non-sexy professors, the data reveal that students give sexy-rated professors higher quality and easiness scores. If these findings reflect the thinking of American college students when they complete in-class student opinion surveys, then universities need to rethink the validity of student opinion surveys as a measure of teaching effectiveness. High student opinion survey scores might well be viewed with suspicion rather than reverence, since they might indicate a lack of rigor, little student learning, and grade inflation.     

Evaluating assessment quality in competence-based education: A qualitative comparison of two frameworks

Because learning and instruction are increasingly competence-based, the call for assessment methods to adequately determine competence is growing. Using just one single assessment method is not sufficient to determine competence acquisition. This article argues for Competence Assessment Programmes (CAPs), consisting of a combination of different assessment methods, including both traditional and new forms of assessment. To develop and evaluate CAPs, criteria to determine their quality are needed. Just as CAPs are combinations of traditional and new forms of assessment, criteria used to evaluate CAP quality should be derived from both psychometrics and edumetrics. A framework of 10 quality criteria for CAPs is presented, which is then compared to Messick's framework of construct validity. Results show that the 10-criterion framework partly overlaps with Messick's, but adds some important new criteria, which get a more prominent place in quality control issues in competence-based education.     

Impacts of professional development in classroom assessment on teacher and student outcomes

The authors describe an impact study of Classroom Assessment for Student Learning (CASL), a widely used professional development program in classroom and formative assessment. Researchers randomly assigned 67 elementary schools to receive CASL materials or continue with regularly scheduled professional development. Teachers in CASL schools formed learning teams, trained with CASL materials, and implemented CASL in their classrooms under real-world conditions and without any involvement of, or requirements from, the researchers. Analysis of all schools and 9,596 students failed to yield statistically significant impacts of CASL on student mathematics achievement as measured by the statewide test. Impact analyses with 231 teachers yielded statistically significant positive impacts of CASL on teacher knowledge of assessment and the frequency of student involvement in classroom assessment. No statistically significant impacts were found on teachers' assessment practice. CASL implementation fidelity was below the CASL developer recommendations. Findings suggest potential of CASL for improving teacher outcomes.     

Taking the grading leniency story to the edge. The influence of student, teacher, and course characteristics on student evaluations of teaching in higher education

The use of student evaluation of teaching (SET) to evaluate and improve teaching is widespread amongst institutions of higher education. Many authors have searched for a conclusive understanding about the influence of student, course, and teacher characteristics on SET. One hotly debated discussion concerns the interpretation of the positive and statistically significant relationship that has been found between course grades and SET scores. In addition to reviewing the literature, the main purpose of the present study is to examine the influence of course grades and other characteristics of students, courses, and teachers on SET. Data from 1244 evaluations were collected using the SET-37 instrument and analyzed by means of cross-classified multilevel models. The results show positive significant relationships between course grades, class attendance, the examination period in which students receive their highest course grades, and the SET score. These relationships, however, are subject to different interpretations. Future research should focus on providing a definitive and empirically supported interpretation for these relationships. In the absence of such an interpretation, it will remain unclear whether these relationships offer proof of the validity of SET or whether they are a biasing factor.     

Teacher anxiety,teacher effectiveness,and student anxiety

The relationships between teacher anxiety while teaching, student anxiety, and student perceptions of teaching effectiveness were examined. The teachers were 19 nurse educators and the students were 72 student nurses in Sydney, Australia. The teachers taught a lesson selected at random and completed a state anxiety questionnaire before the lesson began and, again, after the lesson in terms of how they felt while teaching. After the lesson, the students completed an assessment of the teacher's effectiveness and a questionnaire to record the anxiety levels experienced while being taught. Teacher A-State while teaching was found to be closely related to student perceptions about lesson organization, teacher affect, and teacher confidence. Teacher A-State while teaching was also found to be significantly related to the level of A-State experienced by the students while being taught.     

An experimental evaluation of three teacher quality measures: Value-added,classroom observations,and student surveys

Nearly every state evaluates teacher performance using multiple measures, but evidence has largely shown that only one such measure—teachers’ effects on student achievement (i.e., value-added)—captures teachers’ causal effects. We conducted a random assignment experiment in 66 fourth- and fifth-grade mathematics classrooms to evaluate the predictive validity of three measures of teacher performance: value-added, classroom observations, and student surveys. Combining our results with those from two previous random assignment experiments, we provide additional experimental evidence that value-added measures are unbiased predictors of teacher performance. Though results for the other two measures are less precise, we find that classroom observation scores are predictive of teachers’ performance after random assignment while student surveys are not. These results thus lend support to teacher evaluation systems that use value-added and classroom observations, but suggest practitioners should proceed with caution when considering student survey measures for teacher evaluation.     

Beginning literacy: links among teacher knowledge, teacher practice, and student learning

Although the importance of phonological awareness has been discussed widely in the research literature, the concept is not well understood by many classroom teachers. In the study described here, we worked with groups of kindergarten and first-grade teachers (the experimental group) during a 2-week summer institute and throughout the school year. We shared with them research about learning disabilities and effective instruction, stressing the importance of explicit instruction in phonological and orthographic awareness. We followed the experimental group and a control group into their classrooms for a year, assessing teachers' classroom practices and their students' (n = 779) learning. The study yielded three major findings: We can deepen teachers' own knowledge of the role of phonological and orthographic information in literacy instruction; teachers can use that knowledge to change classroom practice; and changes in teacher knowledge and classroom practice can improve student learning.     

Teachers learn about student learning assessment through a teacher education process

This study aims to understand the extent to which university professors adopt new pedagogical voices in their learning assessment practices through a teacher education process. Participants (N = 32) were interviewed before and after the teacher education process, and data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative methods. The results of the study demonstrated, first, that teachers renamed their educational discourse about learning assessment significantly, increasing it in assessment for learning practices, particularly in the themes of timing and agents, and reducing it in all themes referred to the assessment of learning practices. And second, three clusters of faculty were identified, which differed in terms of the way they merge both learning assessment practices: professors with a slight prevalence of the assessment for learning conceptual voice, professors with a slight prevalence of the assessment for learning practical voice, and professors with a strong prevalence of the assessment for learning voice.