Abstracts - Earli

classroom goals and clear procedural rules that reflect a common understanding of norms, c)supporting feedback, and d) emphasis of the relevance of content. Most studies these findings arebased on investigate instruction exclusively from the students’ perspective, revealing strongrelationships between the students’ perception of instruction and their motivation. But how doaspect of the instructional settings perceived by the students map on to teaching practices that canbe independently observed? Using 20 Swiss and 20 German selective secondary classrooms, weused expert ratings of videotapes and contrasted them with scales from a student questionnairetapping, among others, at the perceived motivational support in the classroom. Our findingsdemonstrate that, in fact, students’ perception of motivational support in mathematics classroomscorresponds with observational measures. In order to consider individual and class level variablessimultaneously, we applied multilevel analyses to further analyze the data. These analyses showthat students are particularly more intrinsically motivated if the classroom is well structured.Moreover, this observed aspect of the instructional setting is related to the individual and sharedperception of motivational support which, in turn, leads to increased individual motivation.Convergence in students and observers’ reports of instruction within the context of evaluating areform-based science curriculumToni M. Kempler, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USAKai S. Cortina, University of Michigan, USAPhyllis C. Blumenfeld, University of Michigan, USAStudies of classroom practices have relied on several methodologies developed in differentresearch traditions. Surveys assessing students’ classroom perceptions have often been usedbecause students can report on classroom experiences over an extended period of time;Observation rating systems have been developed to identify specific instructional practices thatpositively influence learning, with the goal of improving teacher training and curriculum materials.However, it is unclear to what extent reports of students and objective observers concur in theirassessment given that questionnaire scales tend to be more generic while trained observers focuson specific aspects of teaching practice. The purpose of the current study is to better understandconvergence of students’ and trained observers’ reports of classroom instruction during theimplementation of a reform curriculum. 24 teachers were observed a total of six times across thecurriculum unit as they enacted different types of lessons (e.g. inquiry, benchmark). 1360 studentscompleted questionnaires administered at the end of the curriculum unit. Two measures designedto examine the same classroom instructional practices were used to determine whether students’perceptions matched with specifically for the purpose of the evaluation developed observationmeasures. The observational rating system examines the quality of teacher instruction, definedwithin the context of enacting a reform-based science curriculum. The student survey asked theirperceptions of three instructional practices parallel to those dimensions assessed by theobservation instrument. Results indicate that students and observers provide different perspectiveswhen characterizing classroom instruction. These findings should not be interpreted to suggest thatone measure should be replaced, but rather that each is valid and informative. Students may be lessable to report on the structure and quality of instructional practice, but instead provide a moresummative picture of their classroom experience.Instructional quality – Integrating diverging measurements of classroom environmentMarten Clausen, University of Mannheim, GermanyIn this paper, I summarize and integrate theoretical approaches in the assessment of quality ofinstruction and illustrate the use of an integrated perspective for intercultural comparisons of– 507 –