TEDS-Validierung

Validation of the Instruments from the International Comparative TEDS-M study and its Follow-Up TEDS-FU

Abstract

The TEDS-Validation project aims at answering the question of whether research findings brought forward by measurement instruments to test professional competence of mathematics teachers have predictive validity for the quality of their instruction and the learning progress of their students. TEDS-Validation strongly relies on previous work on the quality-controlled development of instruments measuring professional competence of mathematics teachers that was conducted in the context of TEDS-M, TEDS-FU, and TEDS-Instruction. TEDS-Validation examines the last part related to predictive validity. It is a joint project of the University of Hamburg, the University of Cologne, and the CEMO (Centre for Educational Measurement of the University of Oslo). It will be conducted in cooperation with Thuringia Institute for Teacher Professional Development, Curriculum Development and Media (Thüringer Institut für Lehrerfortbildung, Lehrplanentwicklung und Medien; Thillm) and is supported by the project "Kompetenztest.de" of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. TEDS-Validation will be conducted in Thuringia.

Aims

The project TEDS-Validation aims at answering the question of whether research findings brought forward by measurement instruments to test professional competence of mathematics teachers have predictive validity for the quality of their instruction and the learning progress of their students. The instruments, which will be used, have been developed by the comparative „Teacher Education and Development Study: Learning to Teach Mathematics“ (TEDS-M) (Blömeke, Kaiser & Lehmann, 2010a, b) and measure the professional competencies of future mathematics teachers. If predictive validity of teachers’ competencies for quality-oriented instruction and students’ achievements can be confirmed, then such assessments will fulfill being objective, reliable, and valid and enable examination of teacher effectiveness in future higher education research. The TEDS-M measurement instruments have already been validated. They capture the central cognitive elements of mathematics teachers’ professional competence (Shulman, 1987; Baumert & Kunter, 2006): mathematical content knowledge (MCK), mathematical pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK), and general pedagogical knowledge (GPK). However, it remains an open question whether predictive validity can be assumed with regards to the mastering of professional tasks that are relevant during teaching as the core task of teachers.

Another objective of the project will be to answer the question which forms of teacher competencies – declarative and procedural– are acquired and where during teacher preparation and teachers’ practice these forms are significant for teaching. The TEDS-M measurement instruments measure mainly – not exclusively - declarative parts of cognitive knowledge (“knowing that…”), which is acquired during teacher preparation and can be considered as part of a teacher’s knowledge base needed for teaching. By contrast, procedural knowledge (“knowing how…”) depends strongly on practical experience and is more related to situations and performance in class. That is why in the follow-up of TEDS-M, the so-called TEDS-FU study, innovative forms of situation-specific teacher competence measures were developed (“video-cued testing”). TEDS-FU differentiates these situation-specific abilities triply: perception of classroom situations, interpretation of these situations and decision-making concerning these situations (in the following called PID-model).

Based on expert reviews, these test instruments have been proven to be reliable and valid as well as being suitable for capturing situation-specific skills. If they also turn out to have predictive validity,

then in-depth analyses on the acquisition and on the relation of declarative and procedural knowledge during teacher preparation as well as on their differential predictivity can be carried out in order to get evidence on designing teacher education at university, especially for the theory-practice-relationship of opportunities to learn. Such evidence will be related to mathematics teacher preparation, but still they contain high potential for generalization.

Project data