104 Conclusion and discussion of the findings and implications for educational practice and for future research 6.1 INTRODUCTION In the studies in this dissertation, we used the digital Impact! tool to collect student perceptions of teaching quality (see section 1.5 of this dissertation). Collecting student ratings of lesson quality and feeding back the results to teachers for the development of teaching and teachers has been studied for almost 100 years now (for an overview of the research in this field, see section 1.2 of this dissertation). Despite the many advantages of using student feedback (e.g., informative, cost-effective feedback), there have always been concerns about the validity of students’ ratings of teaching quality. Central topics in this dissertation are therefore whether student perceptions of teaching quality as measured by means of the Impact! tool are valid, and under which conditions this form of feedback to teachers may improve the quality of teaching. Inthisfinal chapter, theconclusionsdrawnfromthestudies inthisdissertation are summarized and discussed. First, the main findings of chapters 2 and 3 regarding the validity of student perceptions of teaching quality are presented and discussed. Next, the main results of chapters 4 and 5 with respect to the impact of digital student feedback on teaching are summarized and discussed. Based on our findings and conclusions, we present recommendations for future research. We end this chapter with a reflection on the implications of our results for educational practice. 6.2 THE VALIDITY OF STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHING QUALITY We developed the Impact! questionnaire based on an inventory of characteristics of effective teaching that research has shown to improve students’ learning. These were: creating a supportive and positive classroom climate, well-organized and structured classroom management, providing clear instruction, adapting instruction to students’ needs, good-quality teacher–student interaction, the cognitive activation of students to promote deep learning, and assessing student learning during the lesson (formative assessment). Due to the constraint of developing a student perception questionnaire (for example, we had to limit ourselves to a limited number of items), each of these characteristics of effective teaching is covered by only one or two items (see Appendix X). Therefore, when investigating the validity of the questionnaire, we did not investigate each characteristic of effective teaching separately. Instead, we tested models, with one underlying construct, “teaching quality”, being measured by the total set of items. This study is presented in chapter 2 of this dissertation. Using a combined
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