Assessing Inservice Teachers' Quality Teaching Practices: A Validation Study

Friday, March 16, 2012: 9:30 AM
Room 204 (Convention Center)
Weiyun Chen1, Megan Valley2, Brian Lewis2, Steve Mason2, Austin Bennett-Hammond2, Christina Staniszewski2 and Ashley Upton2, (1)University of Michigan, Northville, MI, (2)University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Background/Purpose: Quality teaching is critical to promoting K-12 students to achieve desired learning outcomes. There is a pragmatic need for developing and validating an instrument to assess a teacher's quality teaching. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Assessing Quality Teaching Rubrics (AQTR).

Method: The AQTR consisted of 17 critical teaching components under the four essential dimensions: Task Design, Instructions, Management, and Responses. Nine elementary physical education (PE) teachers participated in this study. Thirty-one PE lessons taught by the teachers who decided the lesson content were videotaped. After reaching .80 inter-observer agreements, four investigators began to code 31 videotaped lessons with the AQTR following the coding protocols.

Analysis/Results: The Cronbach alpha correlation coefficient of the total scale was .92 with the coefficients of the four sub-scales ranged from .77 to .85. The MANOVA revealed a significant main effect of the Overall Quality Teaching among each teacher's teaching (ë = .011, F = 2331.409, p < .001). The MANOVA yielded significant differences on the Task Design, Instruction, Management, and Responses (F = 2.95, p < .01; F = 6.86, p < .01; F = 6.18, p < .01; and F = 24.84, p < .01) among each teacher's teaching. The confirmatory factor analysis revealed the values of CFI, IFI, and GFI were .91, .91, and .92, while the value of SRMR was .05, confirming the construct validity of the AQTR.

Conclusions: The AQTR was a reliable and valid instrument to assess in-service teachers' teaching practices across teaching various content areas.