Teacher noticing in Taiwan and Germany – What is the role of cultural norms regarding aspects of instructional quality?

在对教师专业知识进行了几十年的研究之后，教育研究者仍然试图找到教师知识如何在课堂上发挥作用这一重大问题的答案。鉴于教师能力的理论模型以及越来越多的实证研究，特定情境技能，如教师注意，似乎在性格和表现之间起中介作用。因此，深入研究教师注意的结构被视为一种有希望的方法，可以深入了解专业知识之外的哪些因素对课堂表现起作用。现有的关于教师注意的研究通常局限于单一的文化背景，因此潜在的文化影响是隐性的。特别是，这种研究不允许识别与教学质量规范相对应的文化共享信念。然而，假设这些信念会影响教师是否以及如何在教学情境中应用他们的专业知识。因此，本项目采用跨文化对比的方法，使影响教师注意教学质量方面的文化规范可见。德国和台湾作为一个西方国家和一个东亚国家被选中进行对比。在内容方面，数学作为一门国际同质学科的重点是避免额外的混杂方差。教师注意的跨文化研究面临的一个挑战是，数学课堂教学质量方面的文化规范不仅对教师注意起作用，而且对研究人员对该结构的操作化也起作用。因此，本项目的设计明确侧重于专家规范的调查：根据两步设计，在第一步，将确定有关教学质量方面的专家规范。这些将作为第二步调查教师注意的参考框架。注意到教学质量的各个方面将通过文本小片段进行评估。每个国家随机抽取N=15名数学教育教授作为对应专家。每个国家的教师样本将包括N=75。这种采用混合方法数据分析的两步设计允许在一个国家内的一致性和跨文化比较两个层面上衡量教师注意相对于专家规范。预期结果一方面允许得出关于教师注意结构的可转移性和文化特异性方面的结论。另一方面，我们将推导出对特定文化规范敏感的教育建构进行有效跨文化研究的标准。

After decades of research on teacher professional knowledge, researchers in education still try to find answers to the major question of how teacher knowledge becomes effective in the classroom. In view of theoretical models of teacher competence as well as a growing body of empirical research, situation-specific skills such as teacher noticing appear to be mediating between disposition and performance. Hence, in-depth investigation on the construct of teacher noticing is seen as a promising approach to gain insight into which factors beyond professional knowledge play a role for classroom performance. Existing research on teacher noticing is usually restricted to a single cultural context and thus potential cultural influences remain implicit. In particular, such research does not allow identifying culturally shared beliefs corresponding to norms regarding instructional quality. It is however assumed that such beliefs affect if and how teachers apply their professional knowledge in instructional situations. Consequently, this project follows a cross-cultural contrasting approach to make visible cultural norms that influence teacher noticing regarding aspects of instructional quality. Germany and Taiwan were chosen for the contrast as a Western and an East-Asian country. In terms of contents, mathematics as an internationally homogeneous discipline is focused to avoid additional confounding variance.A challenge of cross-cultural research on teacher noticing is that cultural norms regarding aspects of instructional quality in the mathematics classroom are not only expected to play a role for teacher noticing, but also for the researchers’ operationalizations of the construct. Consequently, the design of this project puts an explicit focus on the investigation of expert norms: According to a two-step design, in the first step, expert norms regarding aspects of instructional quality will be determined. These will be used as a frame of reference for investigating teacher noticing in the second step. Noticing regarding aspects of instructional quality will be assessed by means of text-vignettes. A random sample of N=15 professors in mathematics education in each country is considered as corresponding experts. The teacher sample will include N=75 in each country. This two-step design with mixed-methods data analyses allows measuring teacher noticing relatively to expert norms in terms of consistency within a country and cross-cultural comparisons on two levels. Expected results allow on the one hand conclusions regarding transferable and culture-specific aspects of the teacher noticing construct. On the other hand criteria for valid cross-cultural research on constructs in education which may be sensitive to culture-specific norms will be deduced.