The intersections of measurement, practice, and research on teaching quality: Tradeoffs to consider
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Researchers frequently want to have careers that impact school and classroom environments. There are many ways to impact those environments. One way is for researchers to use measurement tools that create information practitioners find trustworthy and useful. Another path toward impact is to use tools that produce high quality information about classroom practices in empirically rigorous research aimed at other researchers. These paths are not mutually exclusive, yet they do have tradeoffs. This talk will articulate some of the tradeoffs researchers face when selecting common tools for measuring teaching quality in K-12 classrooms. The talk draws on data from four studies of teaching quality that involve more than 8,000 teachers across continents. Dr. Bell will show how teaching quality’s definition, operationalization, and use by practitioners present significant tradeoffs. Researchers must be aware of and manage these tradeoffs if they are to make valid research claims and support the improvement of teaching.
Bio
Professor Courtney Bell is a Professor of Learning Sciences in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She recently served for more than five years as the Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER). She was the center’s first female director in its 60-year history. During that time, she founded the SimLab at the WCER [simlab.wisc.edu] and fostered the successful launch of the Multilingual Learning Research Center. A former high school science teacher, Courtney earned her doctorate in Curriculum, Teaching and Educational Policy from Michigan State University and a B.A. in Chemistry from Dartmouth College.
Courtney led the international development of two teacher observation systems and served as a principal investigator on the Global Teaching InSights study, the first of its kind to comprehensively measure teaching quality using observations, artifacts, questionnaires, and student outcomes in eight economies. She is currently engaged in both national and international studies of teaching, the measurement of teaching, teacher education, and teacher learning.
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