8 The reliability and construct validity of student perceptions of teaching quality 1.1 INTRODUCTION Within schools, the quality of the teaching is one of the most important factors that impact student achievement (Nye et al., 2004; Rivkin et al., 2005). Partly in response to a decline in student achievement all over the world (OECD, 2014), great emphasis has been placed on measuring teaching quality (Timperley et al., 2007). Measuring teaching quality can be done for different purposes, for example, to foster the professional development of teachers, to support timely and efficient human resource decisions, and for research purposes (e.g., to measure the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at improving teaching quality). Teaching quality can be measured in several ways. Single (face-toface) lesson observations by external observers are quite common. However, multiple lessons should be observed and assessed by multiple raters to obtain a reliable picture of the quality of a teacher’s instruction (Hill et al., 2012; Praetorius et al., 2014). Another way to evaluate teaching quality is to analyse student achievement growth. Yet, it remains diff icult to infer the added value of a teacher’s instruction by using such an approach, because many external factors simultaneously influence students’ outcomes. Information on student achievement growth (value added) also does not provide teachers with advice on how to improve their lessons (Visscher, 2017). Teachers can evaluate themselves, but according to f indings from Kruger and Dunning (1999), many people think of themselves as performing above average; underperformers, in particular, vastly overestimate their performance. This also appears to be the case for (underperforming) teachers (Inspectorate, 2013). Teacher selfevaluations may thus be invalid measures of teaching quality (Muijs, 2006). Another way to evaluate teaching quality is to measure the perceptions of the target group, the students, concerning their teacher’s teaching (Coles, 2002; Kane & Staiger, 2012). As students are the only ones who experience a teacher’s instruction almost daily, they are in some respects in a better position to make judgments about the teacher, than, for example, an outside observer who visits the classroom only once or a few times (den Brok, Brekelmans, et al., 2006; Donahue, 1994; Korfhage, 1997). However, validly measuring teaching quality through students’ eyes is not a given, and the arguments for and against the use of student ratings as a basis for improving teaching have been going on for some time now (cf. section 1.3 of this chapter). Moreover, the impact of student perceptions of teaching quality on the subsequent improvement of teaching requires more than just providing student perception data to teachers, because even if student ratings were guaranteed to be accurate measures of teaching
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