87 5 quality based on student feedback includes five steps: (1) Data on student perceptions of teaching quality are collected; (2) The results are provided to teachers as feedback; (3) Teachers can identify aspects of their lessons that need improvement and consider alternative ways of acting; (4) Teachers carry out improvement-oriented actions based on the feedback; (5) To determine the effectiveness of the actions undertaken by teachers, student feedback can be collected again (see also chapter 4 of this dissertation). Although Fraser’s steps seem obvious, it has been shown that student feedback is not a panacea for improving teaching quality (Röhl et al., 2021) and that several factors influence feedback usage (Wisniewski & Zierer, 2021). In what follows, we outline how teachers’ attitudes, their improvement-oriented actions, and school context and data (system) characteristics could hinder or stimulate the use of student feedback to improve teaching. 5.2.1 Teachers’ attitudes A teacher’s attitude towards student feedback on teaching quality is one factor that might be related to the teacher’s use of the feedback data. This attitude varies between teachers (Röhl & Rollett, 2018). Teachers who have a positive attitude towards student feedback see the feedback as valuable information about the quality of their teaching (Berger et al., 2013; Dretzke et al., 2014; METproject, 2012). Teachers can also be sceptical regarding student feedback and, for example, have doubts about students’ ability to distinguish between high- and low-quality teaching behaviours (Dretzke et al., 2014; Schulz et al., 2014). Earlier research by Kauchak et al. (1985) and Schwab and Iwanicki (1988) showed that teachers’ attitudes towards student feedback fell into three distinct categories. The most positive one-third of teachers felt that student feedback could provide valuable information about a teacher’s performance and that they could develop further professionally by interpreting the results. The middle one-third was sceptical about the use of student feedback and indicated that, when collected, student feedback ratings should be interpreted with a great deal of caution. The least positive one-third of teachers openly opposed the use of student feedback, and they doubted whether students could provide valid information about teaching quality, due to the supposed incapacity of students, especially younger students, to understand the complexities of teaching and to differentiate between competent and incompetent teacher behaviours. More recently, Röhl and Rollett (2018) also created a typology of teacher attitudes towards student feedback. Based on studies by, among others, Bastian et al. (2007), Ditton and Arnold (2004), Schulz et al. (2014) and Dretzke
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