Sigrid Blömeke’s research while affiliated with University of Oslo and other places

The *.zip folder contains Mplus input and output files for reproducing table 2 (measurement invariance across multiple groups) and figure 2 (structural equation model) in the paper.

Identifying protective factors that promote academic resilience is vital. Nevertheless, due to the variations in the operationalizations of academic resilience, timeframes, data sources, and employed research methods, it remains unclear whether the impact of protective factors identified across studies can be attributed to the factors themselves or to these variations. By addressing these uncertainties, this study aims to provide an overview of the protective factors that have been extensively investigated in academic resilience and their degree of influence. A literature search found 119 empirical studies on protective factors in education settings for children and adolescents. The review analyzed five protective factors groups (individual, family, school, peer, community), three operationalizations of academic resilience (simultaneous, progressive, instrumental), two timeframes (longitudinal, non-longitudinal), three data sources (self-collected, national/local assessments, international large-scale assessments), and commonly employed research methods. The studies analyzed in this review yielded mixed results regarding the impact of the examined protective factors, with measurement instruments and statistical power playing a significant role in explaining the variations. Individual and school-level characteristics emerged as the most well-studied protective factors; individual characteristics were often investigated through “instrumental” operationalization and structural equational models, whereas school-level characteristics were typically explored through “simultaneous” or “progressive” operationalizations and multilevel modeling. Approximately 31 and 16% of the studies utilized national assessments and international large-scale assessment data, respectively. Both data sources promoted the exploration of school-level factors, with the former facilitating the exploration of protective factors across time and the latter contributing to the investigation of teaching-related factors.

A school’s emphasis on academic success (SEAS) is a crucial aspect of school climate that can be rated by different informants, such as teachers or principals, and with respect to their perception of different groups’ emphasis on academic success, such as parents or students. We know little about whether there is agreement between these ratings. Utilizing Israeli Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 data and multilevel structural equation modeling, we examined how teachers and principals rate teachers’, students’, and parents’ emphasis on academic success and how these ratings are related to student achievement. We found that (a) ratings are invariant across informants; (b) teachers and principals agree on parents’ and students’ yet not teachers’ emphasis; (c) teacher ratings explain more variation in student achievement than principal ratings. Since SEAS ratings diverge by informants and relations to student achievement, researchers need to craft validity arguments in their studies.

Teacher quality, teaching quality, school resources, and school climate are commonly identified as protective factors in the academic resilience literature. Variables reflecting these four concepts were applied in a latent profile analysis across 36 education systems participating in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2019. The best-fitting model suggested four different latent profiles of protective factors. A three-step BCH method with an auxiliary regression model was adopted to investigate the influence of education expenditure on academic resilience across the profiles. Education expenditure promoted academic resilience in a profile characterized by low mathematics resources and another profile with low teaching quality and school climate. Education expenditure had no significant influence in the remaining two profiles characterized by very low and high levels of classroom and school protective factors, respectively. Moreover, countries were classified into six cultural groups representing education systems sharing similarities in language, history, or geography. Within each group, there was a certain degree of consistency in the distribution of profiles. Conclusions are drawn for strategies to promote academic resilience.

Socioeconomic inequalities in student achievement are often attributed to diverse family backgrounds, which provide students with different prerequisites for success and support during schooling. The role of schooling in contributing to these inequalities is largely an open question. This study examines which mathematics content students have been exposed to and whether socioeconomic differences in their content coverage existed using IEA’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 data from grade four students in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The findings reveal significant disparities in mathematics content taught across all four countries. Finland shows remarkable achievement differences between classrooms, larger than other Nordic countries, suggesting possible implicit ability tracking within schools. Other differences indicate disagreements between teachers and schools about which mathematics content to teach to grade four students. In Denmark, these differences are strongly related to students’ socioeconomic background, as higher socioeconomic status (SES) students are exposed to more topics than their medium and lower SES peers. Such a result may point to school segregation. In Norway and to some extent in Sweden, the amount of content coverage decreases at the upper end of the SES distribution, suggesting a compensatory approach that is at the expense of high-SES students. The chapter concludes with implications for research and policy.

In educational research, teaching quality is extensively studied because of its role of a mediator between teacher characteristics and student learning. However, empirical evidence on differences between video and live scoring of teaching quality is rare. In the present study, thirty lessons from 15 secondary mathematics classrooms in a German metropolitan area were observed. Lessons were scored both live in the classroom and using video recordings. Live and video scoring was conducted by (different) trained observers. Ratings were obtained with a “hybrid” observational instrument that covers generic and subject-specific characteristics of teaching quality in mathematics classrooms. Generalizability analysis and paired t tests were performed to investigate mode effects. The findings showed that in live scoring, classroom management was rated lower, and cognitive activation was rated higher. Rankings of lessons or classrooms were very similar across modes, and reliabilities did not differ to a meaningful extent either, except for classroom management reaching better results for live ratings. This suggests that based on the present findings, classroom observation performed with our hybrid framework of teaching quality generalizes across observation mode only under certain circumstances. Further research is necessary to better understand the relation between observation mode and teaching quality ratings, as well as the impact of the scoring procedures. We discuss the implications of our findings for educational research and practice.

Please find the open access article here: https://jlb-journallehrerinnenbildung.net/download?wpdmdl=1502

This study investigates the relations between working environment and teachers' job satisfaction, perceived work‐related stress, as well as work‐related self‐efficacy. The sample consisted of 226 mathematics teachers from German secondary schools. About 55% were female and they had been teaching for 13 years on average. We used self‐reported measures to assess how teachers perceived their working environment (regarding autonomy, feedback, and social support by colleagues), administrative leadership and teachers' work‐related self‐efficacy, as well as job satisfaction and work‐related stress. Structural equation modeling demonstrates that teachers' job satisfaction and stress were significantly associated with self‐efficacy (moderate to large effects) and an administrative leadership at the corresponding schools (small to moderate effects). The effect of social support on teachers' job satisfaction and stress was fully mediated by teachers' self‐efficacy. Our findings underscore the importance of self‐efficacy and a positive working environment for teachers' job satisfaction and stress. Teachers' self‐efficacy is positively associated to their job satisfaction Frequent feedback by peers and efficient school leadership relate negatively to teachers' stress A supportive school environment could help teachers to increase their self‐efficacy Teachers' self‐efficacy is positively associated to their job satisfaction Frequent feedback by peers and efficient school leadership relate negatively to teachers' stress A supportive school environment could help teachers to increase their self‐efficacy