Differential teacher effectiveness on student engagement and learning attitudes

Various theories concerning teacher effectiveness (e.g., Campbell, Kyriakides, Muijs & Robinson, 2003; Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008; Marzano, 2003) indicate that consistency and variation in teaching practices may affect individual teacher effectiveness and collective teacher effectiveness in a school, but have not received enough regard. The study reported her was based on the analyses of 400+ lessons of 240 teachers from Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou and in-depth analyses that linked the teacher effectiveness results of six teachers in two-year observations with student surveys. A model of differential teaching effectiveness was first established based on the variation and consistency across teaching dimensions and across lesson contexts and then ANOVA was conducted to examine the effect of teacher effectiveness on students’ self-regulated learning and attitudes to assessment. Findings suggest that studies relying on single measure in teacher evaluation and teaching research may yield biased results. Promoting inclusive education extensively might also have impeded teaching effectiveness and learner engagement. Impacts of modest teaching effectiveness on self-regulated learning was also evident. Interestingly, students showed less favorable attitudes toward assessments when they were taught by moderately effective teachers than students who were taught by highly effective or ineffective teachers. The theoretical and practical implications of these results suggest we should examine the impact of teacher effectiveness on student engagement and learning attitudes is not always linear. Copyright © 2018 EARLI.