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Lecture is prominent, but practices vary A large body of evidence demonstrates that strategies that promote student interactions and cognitively engage students with content ( 1 ) lead to gains in learning and attitudinal outcomes for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses ( 1 , 2 ). Many educational and governmental bodies have called for and supported adoption of these student-centered strategies throughout the undergraduate STEM curriculum. But to the extent that we have pictures of the STEM undergraduate instructional landscape, it has mostly been provided through self-report surveys of faculty members, within a particular STEM discipline [e.g., ( 3 – 6 )]. Such surveys are prone to reliability threats and can underestimate the complexity of classroom environments, and few are implemented nationally to provide valid and reliable data ( 7 ). Reflecting the limited state of these data, a report from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine called for improved data collection to understand the use of evidence-based instructional practices ( 8 ). We report here a major step toward a characterization of STEM teaching practices in North American universities based on classroom observations from over 2000 classes taught by more than 500 STEM faculty members across 25 institutions.

Despite the consensus about the importance of self-regulated learning for academic as well as for lifelong learning, it is still poorly understood as to how teachers can most effectively support their students in enacting self-regulated learning. This article provides a framework about how self-regulated learning can be activated directly through strategy instruction and indirectly by creating a learning environment that allows students to regulate their learning. In examining teachers’ instructional attempts for SRL, we systematically review the literature on classroom observation studies that have assessed how teachers support their students’ SRL. The results of the 17 retrieved studies show that in most classrooms, only little direct strategy instruction took place. Nevertheless, some teachers provided their students with learning environments that require and thus foster self-regulated learning indirectly. Based on a review of classroom observation studies, this article stresses the significance of (1) instructing SRL strategies explicitly so that students develop metacognitive knowledge and skills to integrate the application of these strategies successfully into their learning process, and (2) the necessity of complementing classroom observation research with data gathered from student and teacher self-report in order to obtain a comprehensive view of the effectiveness of teacher approaches to support SRL. Finally, we discuss ten cornerstones for future directions for research about supporting SRL.

The question of what makes a good teacher has been asked by practitioners, policymakers, and researchers for decades. However, there is no guiding framework about which qualities are important for teachers. Thus, it is necessary to examine these qualities using a recognized framework and to summarize the previous literature on this topic. We conducted a metaanalysis on the 25 studies (total N = 6294) reporting the relationships between teacher Big Five personality domains (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability) and two teacher job-related outcomes (i.e., teacher effectiveness and burnout). Furthermore, the influence of three moderators was assessed, namely, the type of teacher effectiveness measure (i.e., evaluations of teaching, student performance self-efficacy, classroom observation, and academic achievement), source of personality report (i.e., self-report vs other-report), and the instructed educational level (i.e., elementary, secondary, and tertiary). Overall, teacher Big Five domains (except for agreeableness) were positively associated with teacher effectiveness, especially for evaluations of teaching. Furthermore, teacher emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness were negatively associated with burnout. Other-reports of teacher personality were more strongly associated with outcomes than self-reports. There were no differences in the strength of the associations between the educational levels. The need for using common descriptors in teacher research as well as practical implications of the findings for teacher personality measurement is discussed.

Observation-based frameworks of instructional quality differ largely in the approach and the purposes of their development, their theoretical underpinnings, the instructional aspects covered, their operationalization and measurement, as well as the existing evidence on reliability and validity. The current paper summarizes and reflects on these differences by considering the 12 frameworks included in this special issue. By comparing the analysis of three focal mathematics lessons through the lens of each framework as presented in the preceding papers, this paper also examines the similarities, differences, and potential complementarities of these frameworks to describe and evaluate mathematics instruction. To do so, a common structure for comparing all frameworks is suggested and applied to the analyses of the three selected lessons. The paper concludes that although significant work has been pursued over the past years in exploring instructional quality through classroom observation frameworks, the field would benefit from establishing agreed-upon standards for understanding and studying instructional quality, as well as from more collaborative work.

Equity in mathematics classroom discourse is a pressing concern, but analyzing issues of equity using observational tools remains a challenge. In this article, the authors propose equity analytics as a quantitative approach to analyzing aspects of equity and inequity in classrooms. They introduce a classroom observation tool that focuses on relatively low-inference dimensions of classroom discourse, which are cross-tabulated with demographic markers (e.g., gender, race) to identify patterns of more and less equitable participation within and across lessons.

As states and districts implement more rigorous teacher evaluation systems, measures of teacher performance are increasingly being used to support instruction and inform retention decisions. Classroom observations take a central role in these systems, accounting for the majority of teacher ratings upon which accountability decisions are based. Using data from the Measures of Effective Teaching study, we explore the extent to which classroom composition influences measured teacher performance based on classroom observation scores. The context in which teachers work—most notably, the incoming academic performance of their students—plays a critical role in determining teachers' measured performance. Furthermore, the intentional sorting of teachers to students has a significant influence on measured performance. Implications for high-stakes teacher accountability policies are discussed.

Racial gaps in teacher performance ratings have emerged nationwide across newly implemented educator evaluation systems. Using Chicago Public Schools data, we quantify the magnitude of the race gap in teachers’ classroom observation scores, examine its determinants, and describe the potential implications for teacher diversity. Between-school differences explain most of the race gap and within-school classroom-level differences—poverty, incoming achievement, and prior-year misconduct of a teacher’s students—explain the remainder of the race gap. Teachers’ value-added scores explain none of the race gap. Leveraging within-teacher variation in the teacher–evaluator race match, we find that racial mismatch does not influence observation scores. Adjusting observation scores for classroom and school context will generate more equitable ratings of teacher performance and mitigate potential adverse consequences for teacher diversity.

Improving teacher evaluation is one of the most pressing but also contested areas of educational policy. Value-added measures have received much of the attention in new evaluation systems, but they can only be used to evaluate a fraction of teachers. Classroom observations are almost universally used to assess teachers, yet their statistical properties have received far less empirical scrutiny, in particular in consequential evaluation systems. In this essay, we highlight some conceptual and empirical challenges that are similar across these different measures of teacher quality. Based on a review of empirical research, we argue that we need much more research focused on observations as performance measures. We conclude by sketching out an agenda for future research in this area.

This article reports on a multiple case study that investigated the dynamic and situated nature of learners' willingness to communicate (WTC) in second language (L2) classrooms. Framed within a sociocognitive perspective on L2 learning which draws together social, environmental, and individual factors, this study traced WTC among six learners of English as a second language enrolled in an English for academic purposes programme in New Zealand for 5 months. Data were collected through classroom observations, stimulated-recall interviews, and reflective journals. Analysis of the data suggests that the classroom WTC construct is best described as a dynamic situational variable rather than a trait disposition. This article argues that situational WTC in class results from the interdependence among individual characteristics, classroom environmental conditions, and linguistic factors. These three strands of factors interdependently exert either facilitative or inhibitive effects on an individual student's WTC in class at any point in time. The effect of the combinations of factors differs between individuals, and the interrelationship is too complex to be predicted.

Motivation as a variable in L2 development is no longer seen as the stable individual difference factor it was once believed to be: Influenced by process-oriented models and principles, and especially by the growing understanding of how complex dynamic systems work, researchers have been focusing increasingly on the dynamic and changeable nature of the motivation process. In this study we micro-map the motivational dynamics of 4 language learners during their language lessons over a period of 2 weeks, using a novel instrument--the Motometer--combined with classroom observations and a questionnaire on motivation and attitude. The article answers three current questions concerning L2 motivation: (a) Can we demonstrate variability in students' L2 motivation in class; (b) Is there a detectable stable level of students' in-class motivation; and (c), If both of these are demonstrated, can they be accounted for by the classroom context? The results affirm that student motivation can be successfully explored using a dynamic systems framework. Our findings demonstrate how motivation changes over time on an individual level, while also being characterised by predictable and stable phases, and how it is inseparable from the learner's individual learning context. The data also show that motivation can be meaningfully studied at different interacting time scales.