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Ample evidence has been found for the association between affective, dyadic student–teacher relationships and students’ engagement with schoolwork in Western, individualistic countries. There are far fewer studies, however, examining this association in Eastern, collectivistic countries. As maintaining harmony in interpersonal relationships plays a crucial role in collectivistic countries, student–teacher relationships may even be more important in collectivistic countries than in individualistic countries. In the present study, we therefore investigated cross–cultural differences in the strength of associations between student–teacher relationship quality and students’ engagement based on data from the Netherlands (a Western country) and China (an Eastern country). The Dutch sample included 789 students (51.1% girls) and the Chinese sample included 588 students (52.9% girls) from grades 3 to 6 of elementary school. Students reported about the quality of their relationship with their teacher (closeness, conflict) and their behavioral and emotional engagement with schoolwork. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that the positive association between closeness and both behavioral and emotional engagement was stronger for the Chinese sample than for the Dutch sample. In contrast, the negative association between conflict and both behavioral and emotional engagement did not differ across countries. To conclude, closeness may be more relevant for Chinese students’ engagement than would be expected based on Western studies, whereas conflict seems to be equally harmful in both cultures. Therefore, developing relationship-focused interventions for Chinese teachers and students seems important, either by adapting Western programs or by developing new programs especially designed for Chinese schools.

Limitations in the current knowledge base on the importance of perceived teaching behaviour and student engagement are visible. Past studies on this topic specifically take place in certain contexts (usually the Western context) using various instruments. The current study aims to extend our understanding of the link between perceived teaching behaviour and student engagement based on students' perceptions using uniform measures across six contrasting national contexts. It also aims to explore the role of certain personal variables in the interplay between students' perceived teaching behaviour and engagement. In total, 40,788 students in The Netherlands, Spain, Indonesia, South Korea, South Africa, and Turkey participated in the survey using the My Teacher Questionnaire (MTQ) and the Student Engagement scale. Item Response Theory (IRT) and Classical Test Theory (CTT) analyses were used to analyse the student data. Results show that, in general, perceived teaching behaviour is positively related, and mostly strongly, to student engagement across the six educational contexts. This means the higher the perceived teaching behaviour, the higher students reported their academic engagement, and vice versa. Slight differences in the magnitude of relationships between perceived teaching behaviour and engagement are evident. The strongest link was found in the Netherlands, followed by South Korea, South Africa, Indonesia, Turkey, and Spain. Student gender, age, and school subject hardly show effects on the interplay between perceived teaching behaviour and engagement. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Many observation instruments are in use to make the skills of teachers visible. These tools are used for assessment, for guidance and coaching, and for policy-oriented research into the quality of education. Depending on the purpose of use of an observation instrument, we not only need more observations about the same teacher, but the observation instrument must also meet higher psychometric requirements. Observation instruments only used to assess sample characteristics, such as the mean and dispersion, require less stringent psychometric requirements than observation instruments that are used to assess individuals. For assessing sample characteristics, it is also not necessary to do more than one observation with each respondent. Observation instruments used for individual assessments that lead to high stake decisions should meet the highest psychometric requirements possible. We can slightly mitigate the psychometric norms attached to an observation tool that is only used for guidance and coaching on the condition that the observed teacher explicitly informed that the observed lesson was representative and that this lesson offered sufficient opportunities to demonstrate all the skills the teacher has. Nevertheless, there are also additional requirements that must be met by observation instruments that are used for guidance and coaching. For good guidance and coaching, it is usually not very useful to tell an observed teacher only what went right or wrong. Teachers need concrete instructions to be able to improve. Many things that have not gone very well are often (and sometimes far) out of the reach of the teacher being observed. Coaching skills that are beyond the reach of the observed person will lead to disappointment rather than to the desired effect. The important thing in good guidance and coaching is to ensure that the observed teacher is going to take that very step, that is within his reach, but that he has not just set. Then, of course continue with

Internationally, differentiated instruction (DI) is suggested as a teaching approach that can help teachers to meet the varying learning needs of students in the classroom. However, not all teachers reach a high level of implementation. Personal characteristics of the teacher as well as teaching quality may affect the degree and quality of DI. In addition, several classroom-, school-, and country characteristics may affect DI practices. In this chapter, literature is reviewed about personal factors, teaching characteristics and contextual factors influencing DI. Findings from the literature are connected to analyses of classroom observation-data collected in six countries including Indonesia, the Netherlands, Mongolia, Pakistan, South Korea and Spain. The chapter aims to contribute to insights into factors related to DI and into differences in these associations between the six countries. This chapter concludes by discussing scientific and practical implications.

Over the last decade, a limited number of studies have documented changes in effective teaching behaviour in secondary education over time. However, the studies are rather fragmented and heterogeneous in terms of measurements, contexts, and time intervals. This study aims to investigate changes in secondary school teachers' teaching behaviour over time, by using a uniform observation instrument in five contrasting national contexts. The study focuses on the examination of inter- and intra-individual differences in teachers' effective teaching behaviour across Indonesia, Mongolia, Pakistan, South Africa, and the Netherlands. A total of 3158 teachers across the five countries participated in this study. Their classroom lessons were observed by trained observers in the natural classroom setting longitudinally using a uniform observation measure called International Comparative Analysis of Learning and Teaching (ICALT). Results show that, in general, between-schools, between-teachers, and within-teacher differences are visible, with some degree of variations in proportion depending on the country and the type of teaching behaviour. Within-teacher differences are consistently large across countries. This provides evidence regarding the dynamic characteristics (i.e., change) of teaching behaviour cross-nationally. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

There is a growing desire to improve the quality and the equity of education around the world. Educational improvement requires understanding that the chief actors in the education system - teachers and students - and the educational context in which they operate, are indispensable in this pursuit. This book contributes to understanding educational systems and personal factors that influence teaching behaviour and student learning and engagement. Particularly, the book focuses on the work of teachers - in terms of effective teaching - as key players in education. Effective teaching refers to classroom processes or instructional practices related to student learning (Wagner et al., 2013). This broad definition encompasses various terms used in the literature on teaching to refer to similar constructs and ideas. It is therefore important to note that the scope of this book represents various strands of research on teaching.

In this chapter, (a selection of) current conceptualizations, theories, measurements, and instruments of (quality of) teacher and teaching behaviour from a variety of perspectives, namely educational and teacher effectiveness research, learning environments research and research on motivational teaching are discussed. Furthermore, attention is paid to topics such as the dimensionality of teacher and teaching behaviour, and of teaching skills, as well as the existence of teaching styles and stages in teaching skill development. In addition, context, antecedents, informant as well as (in)stability issues concerning teacher and teaching behaviour are addressed. Relevant empirical findings concerning the already mentioned issues as well as empirical findings with regard to teacher and teaching effectiveness in relation to student motivational outcomes are reviewed and discussed. Attention is paid to unique and joint effects of teacher and teaching behaviour dimensions and relative sizes of effects. In addition, differential effectiveness of teacher and teaching behaviour in relation to student background characteristics such as gender, social-economic status, cognitive ability, race and ethnicity, and prior engagement is discussed. The chapter ends with conclusions, reflections, implications and suggestions for future research directions and practice related to effective teacher and teaching behaviour based on the findings discussed before.

Teachers’ intrinsic orientation for the profession (TIOP) refers to a compound trait derived from the meaningfulness and positive affect teachers attribute to the profession. It can be validly measured by three conceptually correlated yet empirically separable factors of autonomous motivation, enthusiasm for teaching, and enthusiasm for the subject. Grounded in the previous findings of non-significant direct relationships between TIOP and effective teaching, the present study further tested the hypothesized indirect relationships between the two constructs. To better understand the underlying relational mechanisms, the potential mediating role of self-efficacy and the moderating effects of both teacher- and school-level background factors were addressed in single- and multi-level models. A total of 239 beginning teachers from 32 Dutch secondary schools responded to the questionnaires at the beginning of the first career year. Actual teaching behaviour was observed by means of classroom observations. The results of lower-level mediation analysis confirm the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between TIOP and activating teaching behaviour at career entry. The results of single- and cross-level moderated mediation analysis show that self-efficacy significantly mediates the links between TIOP and three specific teaching behaviour domains: providing safe and stimulating learning climate, classroom management, and clarity of instruction. These effects were respectively moderated by teachers’ qualification, age, and gender. The present study makes a unique contribution to understanding the importance of TIOP for beginning teachers’ well-being and effective teaching, providing insights for both teacher educators and mentors.

Insight in the way verbal teacher-student classroom interaction unfolds during the language lesson is of crucial importance for effective teaching. Although classroom observational research is indispensable, it is unable to uncover underlying intentions or motivations for the observed behavior. Teacher cognition research seeks to address the relation between teaching practice and what teachers think. This study reports on the perceptions of a group of English as a foreign language teachers (n = 57) who were asked to reflect on results from a classroom observation study about EFL teacher-student interaction in a similar teaching context. A large majority (82%) of the respondents recognized the observed pattern of closed teacher questions and limited student responses. This majority indicated that student participation in their own lessons is similar to the observed lessons or lower. Respondents attributed the pattern of high teacher activity and low student activity to emotional factors rather than to students’ proficiency levels, lesson content, lesson activities or motivational aspects. According to 51% of the respondents, making students feel more competent by focusing on formative evaluation might improve classroom interaction, whereas 18% of the respondents suggested that interaction could be improved by using different teaching materials.

Differentiation is mainly linked to differences in learning capacities, but students differ in more domains: differences in motivation, behavior and special educational needs (SEN) are equally relevant. In line with the world-wide trend towards inclusive education, the aim of this chapter is to shed light on Dutch teachers’ intentions to differentiate, as well as possible differences in interactions between teachers and students with and without SEN in regular secondary vocational educational education. We first analyzed teachers’ online diary entries with regards to their intended differentiation practices for the next lesson. We coded what kind of intentions arise, the level of detail and quality of these intentions and to what kind of differentiation is referred (only cognitive, or possibly also differentiation on domains of behavior, motivation, or students with SEN). Second, we focused on one-to-one classroom interactions between teachers and students with and without special educational needs. We analyzed to what extent there are differences between the interactions of students with and without SEN in terms of teachers’ need-supportive teaching and students’ engagement. Together, these studies contribute to our understanding of differentiation intentions and practices with regards to meeting the needs of all students in diverse classrooms.

This chapter focuses on the challenges that teachers face in today’s heterogeneous classrooms when it comes to addressing students’ educational needs. By means of a conceptual discussion about this topic, relating to recent empirical studies in this field, we discuss whether teachers’ adaptive teaching behavior could be promoted through professional development approaches – such as Lesson Study – that focus explicitly on students’ learning. Taking students’ learning as a starting point in collaborative and classroom-based professional development approaches, one could expect that teachers gain more awareness of the variety of their students’ educational needs which, in turn, may lead to teachers better addressing these needs in classroom settings. It is argued that through such a cyclical and inquiry-based way of working, teachers may start to feel more competent and able to address the learning needs of students, leading to increasingly adaptive teaching practices. However, despite promising results in the literature, there is still much debate on the evidence of how Lesson Study influences adaptive teaching behavior in favor of all students and how this, in turn, impacts student learning. A “local proof route” to testing the effectiveness of Lesson Study might offer suitable directions.

On the basis of Bandura’s social cognitive theory, researchers often assume that a teachers’ self-efficacy (TSE) will have a positive effect on teaching quality. However, the available empirical evidence is mixed. Building on previous research into TSE, we examined whether assessing class-/task-specific TSE gives a more accurate indication of the associations between TSE assessments and student-rated teaching quality. The analyses were based on the English sample of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) Video Study. Mathematics teachers (N = 86) rated their self-efficacy beliefs using generalized task-specific TSE items and class-/task-specific TSE items. Their students (N = 1,930) rated the quality of teaching in their math class. Multilevel regression analyses revealed stronger associations between student-rated teaching quality and class-/task-specific TSE than generalized task-specific TSE. We discuss possible reasons for these results and outline the potential benefits of using class-specific assessments for future TSE research.

We know that teachers' gaze patterns affect student learning, that experts and novices differ in their gaze during teaching and that gaze patterns differ by culture in non-educational settings. However, teacher gaze research is limited to Western cultural contexts and largely to laboratory settings. We explored expert and novice teacher gaze in real-world classrooms in two cultural contexts: Hong Kong and the UK. Forty teachers wore eye-tracking glasses during teacher-centred activities. We analysed ‘communicative gaze’ (gaze during talking) and ‘attentional gaze’ (gaze during questioning). We compared static (i.e., aggregated) and dynamic (i.e., structural) measures across expertise and cultures. Expert teachers looked longer at students and showed greater gaze efficiency than novices did, during attentional and communicative gaze. Expert teacher gaze was also more strategically consistent. In terms of cultural differences, UK teachers displayed greater attentional efficiency whereas Hong Kong teachers displayed greater efficiency in their communicative gaze. Our research underscores the value of going beyond conventional static analyses for culturally sensitive gaze research.

We considered applicants’ perceptions of the use of a pilot situational judgment test (SJT) designed for selection into primary and secondary teacher training programs in the UK. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 304 applicants (73% female) to two postgraduate (PGCE) training programs in the 2013-2014 application cycle. Participants were asked to provide feedback on the content of the SJTs and on the appropriateness of the tests for selection into teacher training. Results from the rating scales showed that most of the applicants (76.7%) found the content and format of the pilot selection tool favourable. Results from open-ended questions suggested that applicants were aware of issues of procedural justice and fairness in selection for teacher training, with a recommendation that separate selection tests should be created for primary and secondary applicants.