Classroom observation frameworks to measure teaching quality have been established for purposes as diverse as steering education systems, investigating relationships between teaching and student outcomes, or developing teachers' professional skills. About the latter purpose, there is a consensus that for classroom analyses of teaching quality to support teachers in improving their practice, observation instruments must consider subject specificity (Hill & Grossman, 2013).

A wide range of classroom observation frameworks have been developed in recent years, ranging from the more generic to the more content-specific ones. Generic frameworks attend the general demands of teaching whatever the subject matter concerned, whereas subject-specific ones are informed by demands of teaching within a particular discipline. The latter ones may be the most adequate for improving teaching, since they explicitly address certain aspects of “content knowledge” and “content knowledge for teaching” (Ball et al, 2008) that teachers need. However, comparative studies of generic and subject-specific frameworks often lead to find less differences than similarities in the assessment of teaching based on the same data (Praetorius and Charalambous, 2018). Best ways of capturing the content through classroom observation frameworks remain uncertain, and it may be worth to reconsider the dichotomy between subject specific versus content-generic frameworks.

At the intersection of teaching quality research and didactic (subject-specific) research, this symposium aims to conceptualize the content-related part of analyses and measurement of teaching quality through classroom observation frameworks which can be used across subjects. This symposium explores how different classroom observation frameworks rely upon certain levels of analysis of tasks and content when examining the quality of instruction. It brings together four frameworks with contrasting characteristics:

1) the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO) was designed as a quantitative, subject-specific framework for measuring the quality of language arts instruction, but it is now used in other subjects (Cohen, 2018).

2) the Three Basic Dimensions (TBD) is a quantitative, content-generic framework designed for measuring the quality of teaching across subjects (Fauth et al., 2022).

3) the Documentary Video Analysis (DVA;) provides a qualitative approach to teaching quality in different subjects from the teacher and students’ perspective (Martens & Asbrand, 2022)

4) the Model for Teaching Quality based on the Joint Action framework in Didactics (JAD-MTQ) is designed as a qualitative content-generic framework for comparing teaching across subjects, with an explicit focus on knowledge content development in classrooms (Ligozat & Buyck, 2024).

Each framework is applied to the same mathematic lesson about algebraic problem solving at grade 8, recorded in Norway (Klette et al, in press).The following questions are explored: 

- How is the content (or the subject) involved in the definition of certain categories of this framework?

- What kind of knowledge (content knowledge and possibly content knowledge for teaching) about the tasks and/or content played in classroom interactions is necessary for the observer to apply the categories (rubrics)?

- What are the challenges of using this framework for analyzing teaching quality in different subjects?

Through these questions, the symposium attempts to uncover the implicit/explicit account of the content (or the subject matter) in the definition of the categories (or rubrics), and in the way that these categories (or rubrics) are being used in ongoing analyses. We expect to clarify the role of “content-related” categories in the conceptualization of teaching quality and thus to highlight important content-specific aspects of feedback that can be given to teachers. This could also shed light on the contextualization of teaching within a subject and the related “subject knowledge for observing” required by observers.

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