Welcome to the QUINT Observation Systems Seminars (OBS seminars). This series will discuss classroom observation systems as a tool for understanding and improving teaching quality.
This and upcoming OBS seminars are open for all interested parties. We want it to become a meeting arena for scholars genuinely interested in observation systems and related issues. Therefore we recommend that you join our network by subscribing to the network mailing list. You must confirm your email address in the confirmation email you receive to complete signing up to the mailing list.
If you are interested in presenting your research or have questions, please contact the organizer, Mark White.
Program
In March through May, we will be hearing presentations from various groups involved in a special issue focused on exploring why the empirical relationship between teaching quality measures and student outcomes measures has been so low and inconsistent across studies. The specific dates and times of these presentations are currently being arranged. The First talk will examine how deficiencies in the conceptualization of teaching quality might explain this empirical finding. In this talk, Charalambos Charalambous, Daniel Muijs, Ariel Lindorff, Mirjam Steffensky will present a talk entitled: Conceptualizing Teaching Quality
Abstract: Empirical studies in Teaching Effectiveness Research (TER) have largely yielded small and inconsistent effects. To better understand and explain these effects in this presentation we argue that it is core to consider how teaching and its quality have been conceptualized and defined in TER. Looking both within and beyond TER, we identify and discuss three potential contributors: lack of a common definition of teaching and its quality and overemphasis on effects on student academic achievement in the definition of teaching quality; a simplistic assumption that there is a universally valid conceptualization of teaching; and inaccurate conceptualization of the dynamics among different teaching aspects. To address these challenges, we propose three steps related to giving conceptualization a more prominent role in TER; defining and using terms more clearly, consistently and transparently; and enriching, extending, or revising TER models to better embrace the complexity of the work of teaching.
Video