TQView Project

Same Teacher, Different Views: Within- and Between-Classroom Differences in Students’ Perceptions of Teaching Quality

Imagine sitting in the same classroom as your friend, listening to the same teacher, yet walking out with completely different impressions. You found the lesson engaging and the teacher inspiring; your friend was bored and unmoved. This kind of divergence is something many students will recognize from their own school days. But what drives it? And does it tell us something meaningful about teaching itself?

This project focuses on how students experience teaching quality and what shapes those experiences. A central question is what leads students to like certain teachers and how this influences their perceptions of teaching quality. Does being well-liked as a teacher go hand in hand with being perceived as effective?

Beyond this, we know surprisingly little about how student perceptions of teaching quality form and evolve over time. In particular, it remains unclear how students experience teaching differently depending on whether they stay with the same teacher across a school year or encounter a mid-year change. Additionally, whether these patterns look different at the level of the individual student versus the classroom as a whole.

To address these questions, this project draws on longitudinal data and examines teaching quality perceptions across time, relational contexts, and levels of analysis. By bringing together teacher popularity and more established measures of teaching quality, we aim to capture a dimension of classroom life that is often felt by students but rarely studied systematically.

Ultimately, this project seeks to contribute to a richer, student-centered understanding of teaching quality. One that takes seriously not just what teachers do, but how it lands.

Want to know more? Get in touch with Eunseo Park (eunseo.parkuuni-potsdampde).