Teaching-Types In The German-speaking Community Of Belgium. In-depth Analyses Of A Follow-up Study To PIRLS

Author(s):

Claudia DoheAnke Walzebug

Conference:

ECER 2010

Network:

9. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 08 B, International Large-Scale Assessments of Student Performance II

Paper Session

Time:

2010-08-26

17:15-18:45

Room:

P673, Porthania

Chair:

Pekka Antero Kupari

Contribution

The IEA-Study „Progress in International Reading Literacy Study” (PIRLS) (Mullis, Martin, Kennedy & Foy, 2007) offers an international comparison of fourth grade student`s reading literacy achievement. The same tests used in PIRLS have been employed in Primary Schools in the German-speaking Community of Belgium to get a deeper understanding of the acquisition of reading literacy and to classify these data in the international ranking.

Results of this study named IGLU Belgien have been published in 2008 (Bos, Sereni & Stubbe, 2008).

In the international comparison the analyses show that the average reading achievement of the students does not significantly differ from the international average respectively the average of the participating countries of the European Union respectively the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development).

Within Belgium the analyses illustrate that students of the Flemish Community perform significantly higher than students of the French Community. A pleasant finding is the in international comparison very low correlation between socioeconomic status and reading achievement in the German-speaking community.

Based on the collected data of IGLU Belgien, we focus the variety of methods used by teachers and further significant characteristics. Here, our paper focuses detailed analyses about the teaching methods of teachers in the German-speaking Community of Belgium. On this issue Lankes and Carstensen (2007) carried out a Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to explore the educational design of teachers in Austria, Canada (Alberta), England, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland,Sweden and USA. According to their analyses we employed the data of IGLU Belgien to identify different teaching-types by using the same indicators.

To describe this issue more precisely the identified teaching-types, which are characterized by their specific use of teaching methods, will be completed by further characteristics (like demographical data or occupational skills). We assume that there are certain other characteristics correlating with the teaching-types which will be discovered and described with the help of information the students and headmasters gave within IGLU Belgien as additional respondents.

The essential research questions are the following:

1) Do we find the same teaching-types in the German-speaking community of Belgium that Lankes and Carstensen (2007) found in other countries when using the same method and the same indicators?

2) Is there a correlation between the identified teaching-types and other characteristics of the teacher, the school or the students in the class?

Method

To find and describe possible differences towards the educational design of teachers, we use the same proceeding as analyses of Lankes and Carstensen (2007) chose: the Latent Class Analyses (LCA) (Lazarsfeld & Henry, 1968; Rost 2004). By using the LCA given responds are evaluated towards patterns. Data basis can be individual items or summarized indicators. The central assumption is, that the population of interest, in this case the teacher participated at IGLU Belgien, is a mixture of response patterns consisting of different populations. The LCA builds types of response patterns, which are very similar within one type and are maximal different between the types. With the help of modelfit indices the optimal number of types will be established. Each person in the sample can be assigned with a special probability to one of the types. The computations are made with WINMIRA 2001 (von Davier, 2001) and other common statistic software.

Expected Outcomes

The five teaching-types identified in IGLU Belgien differ from the ones found by Lankes and Carstensen (2007) regarding to the thematic priority of instruction. We will try to point out the founded differences during the lecture. Furthermore we expect a relation between different teaching-types and other certain characteristics of the teachers, the schools or the students.. We assume that the different teaching-types relate to different student´s reading literacy achievement. We also think that there is a relation between the five teaching-types and the location of the schools. Here we may distinguish between rural, suburb and urban locations of schools. Perhaps there might be also differences inbetween the cooperation of the teaching staff or the coherence within the teaching staff. Furthermore we expect that within the five teaching-types the satisfaction of the headmaster´s support could be relevant in different shapes.

References

Bos, W., Sereni, S., & Stubbe, T. C. (Eds.). (2008). IGLU Belgien. Lese- und Orthografiekompetenzen von Grundschulkindern in der Deutschsprachigen Gemeinschaft. Münster: Waxmann. Lankes, E.-M., & Carstensen, C. H. (2007). Der Leseunterricht aus der Sicht der Lehrkräfte. In W. Bos, S. Hornberg, K.-H. Arnold, G. Faust, L. Fried, E.-M. Lankes, K. Schwippert & R. Valtin (Eds.), IGLU 2006. Lesekompetenzen von Grundschulkindern in Deutschland im internationalen Vergleich (pp. 161-193). Münster: Waxmann. Lazarsfeld, P. F. & Henry, N. W. (1968). Latent Structure Analysis. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Mullis, I. V. S., Martin, M. O., Kennedy, A. M., & Foy, P. (2007). PIRLS 2006 international report. IEA's Progress in Internationale Reading Literacy Study in primary schools in 40 countries. Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center. Rost, J. (2004). Lehrbuch Testtheorie - Testkonstruktion (2. vollständig überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage ed.). Bern: Huber. Von Davier, M. (2001). Winmira. http://www.winmira.von-davier.de

Author Information

Claudia Dohe

Institute of School Development Research

Dortmund

Anke Walzebug

Institute of school development research