83 4 of the Impact! tool can serve as a quick scan for teachers that provides them with insight into where there is room for improvement. However, that is only the starting point. An interesting question is how the other prerequisites for expertise development can be met in schools: how can the Impact! feedback to teachers be combined with the characteristics of deliberate practice in a way that matches what is possible within the context of schools? 4.5.3 Limitations of the study and recommendations for further research First, some practical conditions influenced the intervention in a negative way (Seifert, 2018), for example, internet problems, the need for technology support for (older) teachers, students using different types of mobile phones (different operating systems might make the tool work or not) and students being distracted (because of chatting and text messaging) when they were supposed to fill out the questionnaire. A second remark on the limitations of the study relates to the use of teachers’ self-report for measuring several variables in this study (e.g., teachers’ reflection on their lessons, their improvement-oriented actions). As self-reports may be susceptible to bias such as social desirability (Moorman & Podsakoff, 1992), they have their shortcomings (even if it was considered the best possible way of measurement). Third, teachers in the experimental group might have adapted some of their approaches because they had to f ill out two extra questionnaires. However, considering the f indings (no increased reflection on teaching quality, no sustained improvement of teaching quality), this effect may only have occurred for the improvement-oriented actions undertaken by teachers. Another methodological remark concerns the fact that teaching quality and the possible changes in teaching quality were measured by means of student perceptions. It may be that students have a fixed, subjective image of the quality of their teachers’ lessons that is hard to change. It could be that teachers actually did improve the quality of their teaching, but students did not see and report it (it could be, but we do not know). Further research is therefore required into the reliability and validity of student perceptions of (changes in) teaching quality, and on the factors influencing student perceptions (e.g., student, class and teacher characteristics; see chapter 2 and 3 of this dissertation). Also, student ratings of lessons in the case of an intervention might be compared with the scores of external observers of the same lessons, to determine whether both actors notice the changes in the quality of the teaching.
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