Comparing perceived and observed instructional practices and their predictive power for student mathematics achievement: An analysis of Shanghai data from OECD global teaching inSights

Abstract

This study examined the alignment and predictive power of instructional practices as reported by teachers, students, and external raters by using the Shanghai data that included 85 teachers and 2,613 students who participated in the Global Teaching Insights study. Results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis along with ordinary least square regression indicate that the same four conceptual components including classroom discourse (e.g., allowing students to explain their ideas and engage in peer discussions), meaning-making (e.g., explaining why a mathematical procedure works), cognitive activation (e.g., encouraging students’ critical thinking in solving complex tasks), and clarity instruction (e.g., teachers’ giving clear explanation of subject matter) were identified in the instructional practices reported by teachers and their students. The cognitive activation factor in the data reported by teachers emerged as the most significant predictor of students’ post-test scores, whereas the classroom discourse factor in the data reported by students accounted for the largest portion of variance in students’ post-test scores. Furthermore, our analysis revealed that the alignment between ratings reported by students and external raters was the highest, and student ratings of their mathematics teachers’ instructional practices demonstrated the highest predictive power for students’ post-test scores. Results of this study provide important empirical evidence for the merit of cognitive activation and classroom discourse in mathematics teaching and inspire researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers to pay careful attention to student-reported instructional practices that can serve as a better source of data in measuring mathematics teaching quality.