Reliability and agreement of student ratings of the classroom environment: A reanalysis of TIMSS data

In educational research, characteristics of the learning environment are generally assessed by asking students to evaluate features of their lessons. The student ratings produced by this simple and efficient research strategy can be analysed from two different perspectives. At the individual level, they represent the individual student’s perception of the learning environment. Scores aggregated to the classroom level reflect perceptions of the shared learning environment, corrected for individual idiosyncrasies. This second approach is often pursued in studies on teaching quality and effectiveness, where student-level ratings are aggregated to the class level to obtain general information about the learning environment. Although this strategy is widely applied in educational research, neither the reliability of aggregated student ratings nor the within-group agreement between the students in a class has been subject to much investigation. The present study introduces and discusses different procedures that have been proposed in the field of organisational psychology to assess the reliability and agreement of students’ ratings of their instruction. The application of the proposed indexes is demonstrated by a reanalysis of student ratings of mathematics instruction obtained in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (N = 2,064 students in 100 classes).

Like father, like son? Familial aggregation of physicians among medical and psychology students

Various research findings, mostly from Anglo-American countries, evidence the medical profession to be strongly familial and further suggest that a medical family background may be associated with study success in medical undergraduates. This study explored the familial aggregation of the medical profession among 1-year cohort samples of medical and psychology students in Austria. Whereas physicians only amount to about 0.4% of the total Austrian population, 45.8% of final-year medical students reported any and 25.6% a first-degree medical relative. Male students more likely had physicians in their family than female students and both sexes more likely had male than female medical relatives. Male final-year medical students with first-degree medical relatives were significantly younger than those without, thus indicating faster study progress in this group. Physicians also ran in the families of psychology students, as did psychologists and psychotherapists. Implications of these findings, study limitations, and avenues for future research are discussed.     

Themenheft: Rechner- und sensorgestützte Chirurgie

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Predicting homework motivation and homework effort in six school subjects: The role of person and family characteristics,classroom factors,and school track

This study examines the determinants of homework motivation and homework effort in six school subjects at three levels: student level, classroom level, and school level. We hypothesized that several factors—including stable personality characteristics such as gender and conscientiousness, students' domain-specific homework motivation, and characteristics of homework assignments—have concomitant effects on student homework effort. The sample consisted of 511 students in Grades 8 and 9. Across all six school subjects, multilevel modelling showed that students' homework motivation and homework effort varied primarily as a function of their shared perceptions of homework quality and control (classroom level) and of their conscientiousness, individual perception of homework quality, and expectancy and value beliefs (student level). Domain-specific patterns were found for student gender in line with gender stereotypes. Cognitive ability, family background, and parental homework help or control were only loosely associated with homework motivation and homework effort.     

Der Wert der Mathematik im Klassenzimmer – Die Bedeutung relevanzbezogener Unterrichtsmerkmale für die Wertüberzeugungen der Schülerinnen und Schüler

The lack of secondary school students’ motivation in mathematics lessons poses a great challenge. According to the Expectancy-Value Model (Eccles et al., Achievement and achievement motives: psychological and sociological approaches, New York, Freeman, S. 75–146, 1983), teacher and classmates influence students’ value beliefs. Using data of 1868 ninth grade students and their 72 math teachers, this study was designed to assess the association of several indicators of relevance-oriented teaching strategies and of perceived classmates’ math valuing with students’ value beliefs in mathematics. Two-level linear regression analyses provided evidence that the student-rated practical focus of math lessons predicted students’ intrinsic, attainment, utility, and cost value mainly at the individual level; student-rated classmates’ math valuing was associated with students’ value perceptions more strongly at the class level. Over the course of six months, these effects increased at the individual but not at the class level. Teacher-reported effort to establish connections between math and other domains was positively associated with students’ attainment and cost value. Teacher-rated use of daily life examples led to a decrease in students’ cost value over the course of six months.