Teacher judgment accuracy: How do task- und student variables interact?

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Cordula Artelt
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 286851298

The main goal of the project is to combine two hitherto separately analyzed components of teacher judgment accuracy - teachers' perception of student characteristics and task characteristics - in an integrated approach and to analyze the interaction of both components as a central element of individualized / adaptive teaching. Within the paradigm of the simulated classroom, in which teachers interact with students of varying competence levels and select items of varying difficulty for them, teachers' cognitive processes and judgments will be analyzed. The particular focus lays on explicit judgment characteristics as well as process parameters, such as memory indicators, viewing latencies, and patterns of task selection. Based on this, indicators of judgment accuracy for teachers' perception of student and task characteristics will be derived. These indicators are used to answer the central research question of the project: To what extent are teachers' abilities to accurately perceive student competencies as a person characteristic on the one hand, and task difficulties as a task characteristic on the other hand, two differentiable and interacting constructs that are accessible through an integrated research approach? Based on models of social cognition, among others, the aim is to identify teachers' strategies and cognitive processes related to accurate perception of student competencies and task difficulties. For the four planned experimental studies, conducted in Bamberg and Luxemburg, a new and extended version of the simulated classroom is used, in which task characteristics are implemented. The extended version of the simulated classroom allows to analyze teacher judgment accuracy by combining person and task characteristics in the sense of a testing the limits approach and to identify reasons for inter- and intra-individual variations of judgment accuracy. Furthermore, it is possible to test whether and to which degree current research findings on teacher judgments, that were generated using the reduced version of the simulated classroom, can be replicated. It is assumed - and will be tested - that teachers' judgments and their cognitive processes differ between both versions of the simulated classroom and that the approach of modeling task difficulty results in a more realistic picture of the requirements of teachers' diagnostic judgments.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Luxembourg
• Partner Organisation: Fonds National de la Recherche
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Sabine Krolak-Schwerdt (†)