Why – and How – Should We Measure Instructional Quality?
quality. Internationally, several scholars assert the need for subject specificity when analyzing the qualities of classroom teaching and learning. Hill and Grossman (2013) argue that if classroom analyses are to achieve the goal of supporting teachers in improving their teaching, these frameworks must be subject-specific and involve content expertise. This will enable teachers to provide information that is relevant for situation-specific teaching objectives, regardless of whether this is student engagement, group problem solving or algebra learning. Blöemeke et al. (2015) show how a combination of generic factors and subject-specific factors (in their case, regarding mathematics) is required for producing valid knowledge on how different teaching factors contribute to student learning. Klette et al., (2017) use the PLATO framework (targeted for language subjects) to capture both subject-specific and generic aspects when analyzing the features of Norwegian instruction in languages and mathematics. The MET study (Kane et al., 2012) argues that there were no big differences across the different frameworks deployed when trying to measure teaching quality in 3000 US classrooms using five different frameworks – three subject specific and two generic. There is probably not one right solution to the question of whether to use generic or subject-specific observation frameworks. Instead, the answer to this question will depend on the purpose of the study, be it strengthening student engagement and participation, classroom discussion or content-specific teaching.
METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES Different methodological traditions contribute to the aggregated available knowledge on effective teaching and high instructional quality. While intervention studies have provided a growing body of empirical evidence of instructional strategies that are effective with regard to student learning, observation studies have often found that such practices (for example, the explicit instruction of learning strategies or the scaffolding of performance through effective feedback), are scarce in today’s classrooms (Elbers et al., 2008; Klette et al., 2017; Magnusson et al., 2019). This means that even though a significant number of studies define what highquality instruction would look like, few studies are able to locate these practices in naturally occurring, non-intervention classroom studies. Although research studies of teaching quality take stock of measures of student achievement over time in order to identify indicators of quality, few studies have yet investigated the extent to which such indicators might have differential effects on students with regard to achievement levels, gender, student motivation, or language proficiency. Such effects have been identified in intervention studies target-
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