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Abstract: Despite considerable interest in the topic of instructional quality in research as well as practice, little is known about the quality of its assessment. Using generalizability analysis as well as content analysis, the present study investigates how reliably and validly instructional quality is measured by observer ratings. Twelve trained raters judged 57 videotaped lesson sequences with regard to aspects of domain-independent instructional quality. Additionally, 3 of these sequences were judged by 390 untrained raters (i.e., student teachers and teachers). Depending on scale level and dimension, 16–44% of the variance in ratings could be attributed to instructional quality, whereas rater bias accounted for 12–40% of the variance. Although the trained raters referred more often to aspects considered essential for instructional quality, this was not reflected in the reliability of their ratings. The results indicate that observer ratings should be treated in a more differentiated manner in the future. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Comparing teachers' self-assessment to classes' assessment of quality of teaching can offer insights for educational research and be a valuable resource for teachers' continuous professional development. However, the quality of teaching needs to be measured in the same way across perspectives for this comparison to be meaningful. We used data from 622 teachers self-assessing aspects of quality of teaching and of their classes (12229 students) assessing the same aspects. Perspectives were compared with measurement invariance analyses. Teachers and classes agreed on the average level of instructional clarity, and disagreed over teacher-student relationship and performance monitoring, suggesting that mean differences across perspectives may not be as consistent as the literature claims. Results showed a nonuniform measurement bias for only one item of instructional clarity, while measurement of the other aspects was directly comparable. We conclude the viability of comparing teachers' and classes' perspectives of aspects of quality of teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]