Abstract:

Drawing on the multidimensional nature of instructional quality, the present study tested the measurement property and measurement invariance of mathematics instructional quality across ten European countries using PISA 2012 data, including Belgium (Flanders), France, Germany, Netherlands from Western Europe, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden from Northern Europe and Portugal, Spain from Southern Europe. There was a total sample size of 75,718 students from 2,964 schools. We relied on multilevel structural equation modelling for a better understanding of the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES), instructional quality, school resources, school climate and mathematics achievement.

The following research questions are expanded based on the past research:
(1) What are the patterns of mathematics instructional quality across educational systems?
(2) To what extent do the dimensions of mathematics instructional quality correlate with student performance in each country?
(3) Does the school resource and school climate matter for mathematic achievement?

The construct of mathematics instructional quality comprised five dimensions, and the measurement model was fitted well to the pooled data and held by each country. The goodness-of-fit indices of the measurement model are satisfactory. Five dimensions were identified when focusing on mathematics instructional quality: classroom management, cognitive activation, teacher support, classroom disciplinary climate, and student-oriented instruction. All 26-related items were significant in each dimension, with the factor loadings greater than 0.300. The measurement invariance testing reached to metric level. Although all ten countries can hold the factor structure of mathematics instructional quality, mechanisms between it and mathematics performance vary from country to country. Meanwhile, school SES has higher correlations than family SES, also being the strongest one than other predictors. However, other school-level predictors reported by school principals have different effects on mathematics performance from country to country.

The main contribution of this study is that we found the relationships between each dimension of instructional quality and mathematics achievement across ten countries. Un-identified dimensions (i.e., classroom disciplinary climate, student-oriented instruction) might affect learning outcomes and implications for teachers’ focus on teaching approach, teaching behaviour, and professional development. When making cross-cultural comparisons using data from large-scale assessments, measurement invariance testing should be continued to confirm the comparability across different educational systems. The international comparative perspectives can also be attributed to the diversity in school contexts and educational system policies. Our findings have repeatedly shown high-SES schools with higher-performing in mathematics and the effects are higher than family SES. We also found that school SES was the strongest predictor, and student behaviours and student-teacher ratio partially mediated this relationship.

Keywords:

Instructional quality, mathematics achievement, measurement invariance, socioeconomic status, school contextual features, PISA 2012.