Teachers’ Judgements of Students’ Performance: use of consensus,consistency and distinctiveness information

Teachers’ judgement of students’ performance may depend on how teachers mentally use performance information. The information covariance principle in Kelley's (1967) model of causal judgement was used to portray students’ performance data as consensus, consistency and distinctiveness information. Consensus data revealed a student's performance in relation to his/her classmates; consistency and distinctiveness data provided individuating information about the student. Analyses revealed that teachers relied mainly on consensus information in making both predictive and diagnostic judgements. They made limited use of individuating information. The findings imply that inaccuracy in teachers’ judgements of their students is partly due to the inappropriate strategy of mainly using consensus or comparative performance data.