Validating Students’ and Teachers’ Evaluations of Educational Quality in Secondary School, Aligned with Student Growth and Australian Teaching Standards

This thesis aimed to evaluate the robustness and validity of the newly developed Student Evaluation of Educational Quality School (SEEQ-S) questionnaire for secondary schools. The SEEQ-S, based on the tertiary SEEQ and expanded in a pilot study (Marsh, Dicke, & Pfeiffer, 2019), is a fifteen-dimensional survey comprehensively covering teaching effectiveness. Paired surveys were used to collect both student ratings and teacher self-ratings of teaching effectiveness with the respective SEEQ-S and Teacher Evaluation of Educational Quality – School (TEEQ-S) questionnaires. The first study confirmed the a priori fifteen-factor structure for both student and teacher participant groups. The second study examined the student-teacher agreement for overall teaching effectiveness and all fifteen SEEQ-S factors, supporting convergent and discriminant validity using multitrait-multimethod analyses. Applying the Campbell-Fiske guidelines for the multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) paradigm, I found support for both convergent validity and discriminant validity. The third study examined the external validity of the SEEQ-S questionnaire by comparing the ratings with student growth and the standards for professional teaching (AITSL) questionnaires. Results established strong reliability (alpha’s and ICC’s), revealed support for solid levels of convergent and discriminant validity, high levels of student-teacher agreement, and good external validity with student growth and professional standards for teaching. Based on the strong levels of convergent validity and student-teacher agreement, my findings suggest that teacher self-evaluations are an important basis for validating student ratings. In conclusion, the comprehensiveness of the combined SEEQ-S/TEEQ-S approach makes the SEEQ-S questionnaire an excellent and robust tool for evaluating teaching effectiveness.

This work © 2024, Charlotte Knoester.