School improvement research has shown that school can have a positive influence on student outcomes (Ko, Sammons, & Bakkum, 2013). Teachers are one of the critical elements in any school. Effective teaching is one of the key propellers for school improvement (Ko et al., 2013, p. i) and the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers (Barber & Mourshed, 2007, p. 16). In recognizing the important role that teaching plays in student learning conditions, the Teacher and Learning International Survey (TALIS) selected classroom teaching practices as one of the key policy themes for study in 2008, 2013, and 2018 (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2014, n.d.; Vieluf, Kaplan, Klieme, & Bayer, 2012).

In the European context the report European Ideas for better learning: The Governance of School Education Systems by the ET2020 Working Group on Schools Policy (2016-2018) (2018) emphasized that in order to ensure continuity and transitions in learner development, appropriate curricula and teacher pedagogical approaches should help bridge transitions and foster learners’ growing sense of responsibility for their own competence development and future lives in society (p. 14). Currently in Taiwan, the historical and social circumstances which the tasks of teaching need to address include the impact of internet and globalization on teaching, the trend of low-birth rate and aging, the change of ecological environment on campus and in the family, and the rise of localization consciousness. In response to these changing circumstances, the policy of 12-Year Basic Education has been implemented since 2013 by the Ministry of Education. This large-scale education reform has centered around empowering teachers’ teaching competencies.

Although teaching focuses on the activities teachers perform, its purposes and outcomes involve in changes in the activities of students. Therefore, teaching is a social phenomenon (Svensson & Doumas, 2013). Besides, this social phenomenon occurs in classroom settings which are characterized as multidimensionality, simultaneity, immediacy, unpredictability, publicness, and history (Doyle, 1986). The nature of teaching and the features of classroom environment result in the uncertainty of teaching tasks, which in turn generate innumerable problems of teaching. These problems and related issues have given impetus to solve the problems through research. The rise in the number of research studies of teaching results in the need of knowledge aggregation. Research synthesis is the art and science of collecting and organizing information from research literature in order to arrive at a more comprehensive picture of the topic being studied than is possible from examining individual studies (Gough, Oliver, & Thomas, 2012). Synthesis of quantitative evidence usually uses the procedures of meta-analysis to statistically analyze a large collection of analysis results from individual studies (Glass, McGaw, & Smith, 1981). Synthesis of qualitative evidence seeks to synthesize or amalgamate individual qualitative reports that relate to a specific topic or focus in order to arrive at the new or enhanced understanding about the phenomenon under study (Paterson, 2012). Meta-analysis has been used to analyze quantitative studies on the effects of specific teacher approaches on student outcomes (e.g., Liao & Chang, 2013; Peltier & Vannest, 2017). The use of qualitative research methods in the field of teaching increases significantly in recent years (Svensson & Doumas, 2013). However, what information or knowledge derives from qualitative studies of teaching has begun to receive researchers’ attention (De Gagne & Walters, 2009; Téllez & Waxman, 2006). 

Like teacher preparation research as historically situated social practice (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016), research on teaching could be defined as historically social practice because different countries have approached the task of teaching in different ways. The purpose of this study was to explore the findings of individual qualitative studies of teaching from the perspective of student learning in Taiwan.

“Qualitative evidence synthesis” has been used as a general term characterized by differences in approach. The methods for synthesizing qualitative studies may incline toward interpretive or aggregative. Mainly aggregative synthesis methods involve combining the findings of each primary study into a general description of a topic, while mainly interpretive synthesis methods construct new interpretations and generate new theories about a topic (Saini & Shlonsky, 2012). Considering the broad scope of research on teaching, this study decided to conduct a scoping review first, which intends to synthesize the research in a topical area, by mapping or articulating what is known about key concepts, derived from an array of sources (Peterson, Pearce, Ferguson, & Langford, 2017). Then the interpretatively oriented qualitative case study of meta-synthesis which aims at building a theory out of primary qualitative case studies that have not been planned as part of a unified multi-site effect was conducted (Hoon, 2013). After formulating the research questions which focus on teachers’ teaching and students’ learning, retrieving qualitative studies which focused on topics related to teaching, used at least one of qualitative research approaches or mixed-methods research with an emphasis on qualitative data, contained data in the form of thick descriptions, and published or accomplished between 2002 and 2017 in English or Chinese was conducted. A total of 1,540 qualitative or mixed-methods studies were retrieved and met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. An appraisal of study quality (Major & Savin-Baden, 2010) was used to know how it affected research findings and did not affect inclusion or exclusion decisions. A scoping review was conducted through charting the data and collating, summarizing, and reporting the data in order to map the key characteristics of the research area of teaching. Then the qualitative case study of meta-synthesis was conducted using the findings of 30 published studies of teaching following the steps of extracting and coding data, analyzing on a case-specific level, and synthesis on a cross-study level.

The results of the scoping review showed that among the 1,540 studies, 1,505 studies adopted the action research approach (97.7%), 19 studies (1.2%) used the case study approach. A large portion of the studies (1,492, 96.9%) were unpublished master theses (71.9%) and 35 studies (2.3%) were published in academic journals. The research site of 1,043 studies (67.7%) was elementary schools and that of 308 studies (20.0%) was secondary schools. Various teaching strategies practiced by teachers included reading instruction, creative thinking instruction, picture books instruction, teaching with information, communication and technology (ICT), writing instruction et al. A preliminary causal-effect theory of teaching and learning was constructed from the results of the qualitative case study of meta-synthesis. The eight elements of teaching are teacher-student dialogue, peer dialogue, connection with real life, learning through multiple presentations, teaching with ICT, multiple assessment, demonstration, and practice. These eight elements of teaching contribute to three influential mechanisms, including relevance, scaffolding, and adaption. The student learning consequences are academic competence, social-emotional competence, physical and mental health, motivation, engagement, and else. These seven consequences could be grouped further as attributes conducive to learning and learning outcomes. This micro-level theory of teaching and learning revealed how classroom teaching practices impact student outcomes through different levels of mediating factors.

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