Title: How to study quality in teaching: Comparing designs and implicit assumptions in three QUINT subprojects
Abstract
Broadly, the QUINT ambition is to investigate quality in teaching through a ‘systemic and differential framework’ which involves several subprojects. This presentation attempts to offer a comparative analysis of what this might mean in practice, focusing on commonalities and differences in the research designs of three empirical QUINT subprojects: Linking Instruction and Student Achievement (LISA), the Connected Classroom (CC) and the Quality Literature Education project (QUALE). In particular, I am interested in analyzing implicit theoretical and methodological assumptions in the three projects, and how these assumptions may co-shape how quality is studied, understood and used for further research in the QUINT project involving professional learning and teacher training.
Theoretically, my point of departure is the socio-culturally inspired claim that quality in education is related to ‘what counts as meanings and the legitimate form of their realization in relevant contexts’ (Bernstein, 1990, p. 127; see also Deng & Luke, 2008). This claim strips off some of the easy-going normativity of ‘quality teaching’ often found in policy discourse. Instead, it inspires us to explore quality in theoretically informed and empirically grounded ways, based on questions such as: whose quality, in which context, seen from what perspective? These questions, I argue, are relevant not only for policy makers and teaching practitioners, but also for researchers engaged in studying and theorizing quality in teaching, as in the case of QUINT.
Extended summary (pdf)
About the author
Nikolaj Elf is Professor in Educational Sciences focusing on disciplinary didactics at Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, and a visiting researcher at the National Literacy Centre, University of Stavanger. Elf is also a member of the QUINT Management Group.
Elf's main research field is Language arts/L1-education, focusing on literature, writing and technology, as well as writing in the disciplines and writing development. He is a member of the executive board of the International Association for Research in L1 Education (ARLE) and co-initiator of SIG Technology and Literacy Education within ARLE.
He is a co-editor of the journal L1 - Educational Studies in Language and Literature. Since 2017, Elf is a member of the Steering Committee of International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research (ISAWR). In 2018, he was appointed member of WAC Clearinghouse Publications Review Board.