International teacher and student surveys have become popular instruments to measure the use of teaching practices and classroom practices indicators have been used extensively in recent research. However, little attention has been paid to the low association between teacher and student responses regarding teachers’ practices. Triangulation analyses are necessary to measure and appraise the differences between student and teacher perceptions and to better understand what happens in classes around the world. Five European and three non-European countries took part in the TALIS- PISA link option which administered TALIS 2013 questionnaires to teachers and principals in a sample of schools which participated in the PISA survey in 2012. It represents a unique data source and opportunity to examine the discrepancies between students’ and teachers’ views on teachers’ use of structuring, student-oriented practices and enhanced activities (Vieluf et al, 2012), and their possible explanations. Preliminary analyses show that teachers tend to report more often that they use a given classroom practice than students do. But the degree to which students’ points of view differ from those of teachers varies across practices and countries. Across all practices on average, differences of opinion are larger in Spain and Australia and weaker in Latvia. Across all countries on average, differences of opinion are larger about “having teachers presenting a summary of recently learnt content” and lower about “having teachers continuing teaching until the students understand”. Preliminary regression analyses of school-level differences between students’ and teachers’ views indicate that, on average, divergence regarding the use of student-oriented practices tends to increase with students’ average performance in mathematics, students’ diverging views of the disciplinary climate, and teachers’ average efficacy in instruction in the school, and to decrease with the homogeneity of student mathematics achievement, a privileged social background and teachers’ average efficacy in student engagement in the school.

Vieluf, S., D. Kaplan, E. Klieme and S. Bayer (2012), Teaching Practices and Pedagogical Innovations: Evidence from TALIS, OECD publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264123540-en