Effects of cue availability on primary school teachers' accuracy and confidence in their judgments of students’ mathematics performance

We investigated how the accuracy of teachers' judgments of their students' performance on procedural mathematical tasks, as well as their confidence in that, can be improved. Thirty-three primary school teachers judged how their students (N = 553) would perform on a multiplication and division task, with and without having access to performance cues (i.e., students' performance on similar tasks completed one week earlier). When available, teachers mostly seemed to base their judgments on performance cues. Availability of performance cues improved teachers’ judgment accuracy, resulted in higher confidence in their judgment accuracy, and increased awareness of their judgment (in)accuracy

Improving Students’ and Teachers’ Judgments of Student Performance in Primary School Mathematics Problem Solving

In primary school, teachers and students share responsibility for students’ learning progress. Teachers are expected to provide ‘adaptive’ or ‘differentiated’ instruction: making instructional decisions that are adapted to the diverse needs of individual students. Students are increasingly expected to (learn to) self-regulate their learning. Consequently, teachers are also increasingly expected to help students develop their self-regulated learning skills. The effectiveness of self-regulated learning and adaptive instruction hinges on the accuracy of two key processes: Monitoring and regulation. Monitoring refers to evaluations of individual students’ performance. Regulation refers to decisions about what subsequent activities (e.g., restudy, additional practice, or additional instruction) learners should engage in to improve their performance. Prior research showed that there is much room for improving the accuracy of students’ and teachers’ monitoring and regulation judgments. This dissertation presents studies on how this accuracy can be improved; zooming in on primary school students’ and teachers’ monitoring and regulation judgments of students’ performance on mathematical problem-solving tasks. The main findings support the idea that providing students and teachers with access to information that is highly predictive of students’ actual performance, improves their monitoring accuracy. That is, having students self-score their answers made their judgments of their own performance more accurate and providing teachers with access to students’ scores on similar prior tasks, made teachers’ judgments of their students’ performance more accurate. Yet, when it comes to developing students’ regulation skills, both students and teachers seem to need further support: Even after self-scoring, many students still need help from their teachers to make accurate regulation decisions, while teachers have difficulty identifying which students need their help in doing so. These findings set the stage for further research on how providing students and teachers with information that is highly predictive of students’ actual performance can improve the effectiveness of students’ self-regulated learning and teachers’ differentiation practices

Improving Students’ and Teachers’ Judgments of Student Performance in Primary School Mathematics Problem Solving

In primary school, teachers and students share responsibility for students’ learning progress. Teachers are expected to provide ‘adaptive’ or ‘differentiated’ instruction: making instructional decisions that are adapted to the diverse needs of individual students. Students are increasingly expected to (learn to) self-regulate their learning. Consequently, teachers are also increasingly expected to help students develop their self-regulated learning skills. The effectiveness of self-regulated learning and adaptive instruction hinges on the accuracy of two key processes: Monitoring and regulation. Monitoring refers to evaluations of individual students’ performance. Regulation refers to decisions about what subsequent activities (e.g., restudy, additional practice, or additional instruction) learners should engage in to improve their performance. Prior research showed that there is much room for improving the accuracy of students’ and teachers’ monitoring and regulation judgments. This dissertation presents studies on how this accuracy can be improved; zooming in on primary school students’ and teachers’ monitoring and regulation judgments of students’ performance on mathematical problem-solving tasks. The main findings support the idea that providing students and teachers with access to information that is highly predictive of students’ actual performance, improves their monitoring accuracy. That is, having students self-score their answers made their judgments of their own performance more accurate and providing teachers with access to students’ scores on similar prior tasks, made teachers’ judgments of their students’ performance more accurate. Yet, when it comes to developing students’ regulation skills, both students and teachers seem to need further support: Even after self-scoring, many students still need help from their teachers to make accurate regulation decisions, while teachers have difficulty identifying which students need their help in doing so. These findings set the stage for further research on how providing students and teachers with information that is highly predictive of students’ actual performance can improve the effectiveness of students’ self-regulated learning and teachers’ differentiation practices

Effects of self-scoring their math problem solutions on primary school students’ monitoring and regulation

Preparing students to become self-regulated learners has become an important goal of primary education. Therefore, it is important to investigate how we can improve self-monitoring and self-regulation accuracy in primary school students. Focusing on mathematics problems, we investigated whether and how (1) high- and low-performing students differed in their monitoring accuracy (i.e., extent to which students’ monitoring judgments match their actual performance) and regulation accuracy (i.e., extent to which students’ regulation judgments regarding the need for further instruction/practice match their actual need), (2) self-scoring improved students’ monitoring and regulation accuracy, (3) high- and low-performing students differed in their monitoring and regulation accuracy after self-scoring, and (4) students’ monitoring and regulation judgments are related. On two days, students of 9-10 years old from 34 classes solved multiplication and division problems and made monitoring and regulation judgments after each problem type. Next, they self-scored their answers and again made monitoring and regulation judgments. On the multiplication problems, high-performing students made more accurate monitoring and regulation judgments before and after self-scoring than low-performing students. On the division problems, high-performing students made more accurate monitoring judgments before self-scoring than low-performing students, but after self-scoring this difference was no longer present. Self-scoring improved students’ monitoring and regulation accuracy, except for low- and high-performing students’ regulation accuracy on division problems. Students’ monitoring and regulation judgments were related. Our findings suggest that self-scoring may be a suitable tool to foster primary school students’ monitoring accuracy and that this translates to some extent into more accurate regulation decisions

Primary school teachers’ judgments of their students’ monitoring and regulation skills.

To help students improve their self-monitoring and self-regulation skills, teachers should have an accurate idea of how well students can monitor and regulate their learning. We investigated how accurately primary school teachers can judge their students’ monitoring and regulation accuracy and whether and how student characteristics are related to (the accuracy of) teacher judgments of student monitoring and regulation. Thirty-three teachers, teaching 9––10-year-old students, participated with their classes (N = 495 students). Students completed a multiplication and division task and made monitoring and regulation judgments before and after self-scoring their work. We measured (the accuracy of) teachers’ judgments of their students’ monitoring skills before self-scoring, and of their students’ regulation skills before and after self-scoring. Additionally, we measured teachers’ perceptions of student characteristics (e.g., conscientiousness, general mathematics ability, amount of teacher- student contact). Results showed that the teachers correctly estimated that, in general, their students made quite accurate monitoring and regulation judgments. However, they had difficulties with identifying those students who made substantially inaccurate monitoring and regulation judgments (for whom it is particularly important that the teachers can intervene). When taken together, teachers’ perceptions of student characteristics explained substantial variance in (the accuracy of) teacher judgments of students’ monitoring and regulation skills. Moreover, teacher judgments of students’ monitoring accuracy were more accurate when students were perceived to have learning problems or to be relatively more skilled in mathematics. These findings and measures can ultimately contribute to the design of interventions to help teachers judge and develop their students’ self-regulated learning skills

Student emotions in class:The relative importance of teachers and their interpersonal relations with students

This study highlights the importance of teachers in relation to the emotions students experience in class. First, in line with the work of Kenny, we argue that the specific relationship that evolves between teachers and students drives students' emotional experiences. We decompose variability in student emotions not only into the commonly investigated student and teacher facets but also into facets representing specific pairings of teachers with classes and students (so-called relationship effects). Second, using interpersonal theory, we assess the degree to which the interpersonal quality of teaching accounts for variability in student emotions. Cross-classified multilevel modelling of 8042 student ratings (N = 1668 secondary school students, M-age = 14.94) of 91 teachers indicated that a considerable amount of variability that is usually assigned to the student level may be due to relationship effects involving teachers. Furthermore, the way that teachers interpersonally relate to their students is highly predictive of student emotions. In sum, teachers may be even more important for student emotions than previous research has indicated. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Primary school teachers’ judgments of their students’ monitoring and regulation skills

To help students improve their self-monitoring and self-regulation skills, teachers should have an accurate idea of how well students can monitor and regulate their learning. We investigated how accurately primary school teachers can judge their students’ monitoring and regulation accuracy and whether and how student characteristics are related to (the accuracy of) teacher judgments of student monitoring and regulation. Thirty-three teachers, teaching 9––10-year-old students, participated with their classes (N = 495 students). Students completed a multiplication and division task and made monitoring and regulation judgments before and after self-scoring their work. We measured (the accuracy of) teachers’ judgments of their students’ monitoring skills before self-scoring, and of their students’ regulation skills before and after self-scoring. Additionally, we measured teachers’ perceptions of student characteristics (e.g., conscientiousness, general mathematics ability, amount of teacher- student contact). Results showed that the teachers correctly estimated that, in general, their students made quite accurate monitoring and regulation judgments. However, they had difficulties with identifying those students who made substantially inaccurate monitoring and regulation judgments (for whom it is particularly important that the teachers can intervene). When taken together, teachers’ perceptions of student characteristics explained substantial variance in (the accuracy of) teacher judgments of students’ monitoring and regulation skills. Moreover, teacher judgments of students’ monitoring accuracy were more accurate when students were perceived to have learning problems or to be relatively more skilled in mathematics. These findings and measures can ultimately contribute to the design of interventions to help teachers judge and develop their students’ self-regulated learning skills

Effects of different cue types on the accuracy of primary school teachers’ judgments of students’ mathematical understanding

To gain insight into how teachers’ judgment accuracy can be improved, we investigated effects of cue-type availability. While thinking aloud, 21 teachers judged their fourth grade students’ (n = 176) decimal magnitude understanding. Sensitivity (correctly judging what students did understand) did not improve from availability of both answer cues (students’ answers to prior practice problems) and student cues (knowledge of students triggered by knowing their names), and was lower when only answer cues were available, compared to only student cues. Specificity (correctly judging what students did not understand) was higher when only answer cues were available, compared to only student cues or both student and answer cues