Background: Teaching quality is commonly assessed through classroom observation. However, observer ratings of teaching quality frequently exhibit limited psychometric quality. Beyond evaluating the ratings themselves, exploring the observation process and the design of the video environment may offer valuable insights into conditions that enhance rating accuracy. Aims: This study explored the classroom observation process of preservice teachers using eye-tracking technology and examined how their gaze behavior relates to the accuracy of their teaching-quality ratings. We also investigated the impact of different video environments by comparing traditional classroom videos presented on computer screens with immersive 360-degree classroom videos presented on virtual-reality headsets. Sample: N = 75 preservice teachers participated in a controlled lab study. Method: Each participant observed two randomly assigned mathematics classroom videos-one in a traditional screen-based and one in an immersive video environment. Eye trackers recorded gaze behavior during critical classroom events. Participants rated the quality of the observed teaching after the video observations. Results: Overall, observers adjusted their gaze according to the focus of critical events (teacher-or student-focused). In immersive 360-degree videos, they showed a stronger visual focus on the teacher. Both visual focus of attention and cognitive arousal during critical events, indicated by a larger pupil diameter, predicted the accuracy of teaching-quality ratings, with gaze being a stronger predictor of rating accuracy in immersive compared to screen-based videos. Conclusions: The findings indicate that gaze behavior offers actionable insights into classroom observation processes and informs the design of observation environments in both research and teacher education.

Teachers and parents are two important sources of support for students. During adolescence, relationships with different social interaction partners undergo significant changes.However, empirical evidence on how the relative importance of parental and teacher support for adolescents' affective-motivational and performance outcomes may change over time remains limited. Additionally, effects of parent and teacher support may differ by students' background characteristics (gender, migration background, and socioeconomic status), and a better understanding of these patterns is vital for generating more nuanced insights. Thus, we analyzed data from a longitudinal study of 3470 adolescents and their parents from Germany who participated in yearly assessments from fifth to eighth grade. Results from longitudinal structural equation modeling revealed that parent and teacher support positively predicted adolescents' academic identification with school, school satisfaction, and truancy, whereas only parent support was positively associated with students' academic aptitude self-concept and achievement on standardized tests. These associations remained invariant over time. Moreover, the findings did not depend on students' gender, migration background, or socioeconomic status. We discuss implications of these results for theory and research on adolescent development.

Research has highlighted many complexities in the measurement of teaching quality that might explain the weak and inconsistent effects of teaching on learning. We introduce a lens model framework that connects both the conceptualized construct and the measured construct (i.e., scores) to teachers' actual teaching in the classroom. This model helps researchers to carefully consider the extent to which teaching-quality scores represent the conceptualized construct (i.e., construct validity) and provides a framework for considering various dilemmas that arise when measuring teaching quality. We use the lens model to explore three dilemmas: (1) limitations in the availability and accessibility of cues that characterize constructs, (2) the variability of cues across instructional settings, and (3) the alignment of the unit of measurement and the unit of the construct. We provide guidance and suggestions for managing these dilemmas, which we hope will provide guidance for researchers seeking to measure teaching quality.

Several decades of research into the effects of teaching on student outcomes has generated inconsistent results with small effect sizes. This paper summarizes the key findings of the preceding papers in this special issue which examine why this situation has developed. We argue that the problems are not just a consequence of the inherent complexity of teaching but also the result of oversimplification in the core working assumptions of teaching effectiveness research (TER). We present six assumptions made by TER researchers about teaching, student outcomes, how the two are associated, and the role of context. We consider how they might be revised so that the link between teaching and learning can be better understood and the likelihood of studies with more robust findings is increased. Using this analysis, we propose pathways for the future development of TER.

Teachers' ability to notice relevant classroom situations is crucial to teaching students effectively. This ability is acquired during teacher education and shaped during the teaching profession. It is essential to assess teachers' noticing ability reliably and validly to provide targeted support in teacher training and professional development. One promising approach is written reflections on videotaped classroom situations. However, instruments that allow a comprehensive, flexible, standardized, and efficient assessment of written reflections are lacking. First, this chapter provides an overview of existing instruments to analyze noticing to clarify challenges that current approaches face. Second, the need for systematic basic research to analyze data from written reflections is outlined. It is argued that the resulting findings of human-rated written reflections will also help to establish technology-assisted (e.g., machine-learning [ML]) assessments of teachers' noticing ability, which, in turn, provide a more time-efficient assessment procedure. Finally, the project, an intelligent feedback system for observing videotaped classroom situations (INFER), is introduced. This project is one of the first in which systematic basic research on fundamental open questions related to ratings of written reflections is conducted and in which corresponding results will be used to apply ML algorithms to analyze written reflections for assessing teachers' noticing ability.

This article provides a step-by-step guideline for measuring and analyzing visual attention in 3D virtual reality (VR) environments based on eye-tracking data. We propose a solution to the challenges of obtaining relevant eye-tracking information in a dynamic 3D virtual environment and calculating interpretable indicators of learning and social behavior. With a method called ''gaze-ray casting,'' we simulated 3D-gaze movements to obtain information about the gazed objects. This information was used to create graphical models of visual attention, establishing attention networks. These networks represented participants' gaze transitions between different entities in the VR environment over time. Measures of centrality, distribution, and interconnectedness of the networks were calculated to describe the network structure. The measures, derived from graph theory, allowed for statistical inference testing and the interpretation of participants' visual attention in 3D VR environments. Our method provides useful insights when analyzing students’ learning in a VR classroom, as reported in a corresponding evaluation article with N = 274 participants. • Guidelines on implementing gaze-ray casting in VR using the Unreal Engine and the HTC VIVE Pro Eye. • Creating gaze-based attention networks and analyzing their network structure. • Implementation tutorials and the Open Source software code are provided via OSF: https://osf.io/pxjrc/?view_only=1b6da45eb93e4f9eb7a138697b941198.

Classroom videos are commonly used to observe and assess teaching quality in both teacher education and research on teaching and learning. In recent years, traditional video environments have increasingly been complemented by 360-degree videos, which promise a more immersive and realistic classroom experience and may affect the teaching-quality ratings that result. The aim of the present study was to explore differences between immersive 360-degree and traditional video environments in preservice teachers' (PSTs') classroom observation experiences and teaching-quality ratings. Seventy-five PSTs observed two classroom videos: one using an immersive 360-degree video environment and one using a traditional video environment. For 360-degree videos, observers reported higher cognitive, affective, and physiological involvement in the classroom situation, higher motivation, and higher mental effort when making classroom observations. For one aspect of teaching quality (focus on key concepts), the observation-based ratings resulting from 360-degree videos were better aligned with experts' assessments of the videos. Furthermore, the results showed that the differences between video environments remained significant after the novelty of VR technology was controlled for.

Background: Studies have shown that the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) can be improved by using learning prompts (e.g., summary prompts, pretraining, and priming). However, less is known about how such learning prompts affect students' processing of the learning content within the virtual learning environment.Aims: This study aimed to shed light on students' processing of learning content in VR by analyzing their eye -movements during a virtual biology lesson after they had been primed to perceive VR as useful for learning or for daily life.Sample: Participants were 171 German students in the 10th grade from ten high schools.Methods: Participants were randomly assigned to a learning-usefulness condition (i.e., priming video highlighting VR's usefulness for learning), a daily-life-usefulness condition (i.e., priming video highlighting VR's usefulness in daily life), or a control condition (i.e., no priming video). We integrated the priming interventions at the beginning of the virtual lesson and used VR headsets with integrated eye tracking to monitor students' eye movements during the lesson. Results: When compared with the control condition, the learning-usefulness intervention positively affected students' fixation duration and saccade amplitude, which in turn were positively related to students' learning achievement. Regarding students' learning achievement, the daily-life-usefulness condition did not differ from the other two conditions. There was no difference between the three conditions in terms of interest in the virtual lesson.Conclusions: These results indicate that a brief priming intervention about VR's usefulness for learning can induce appropriate cognitive processing, which can positively affect students' learning achievement.

This paper explores gaze entropy as a metric for detecting classroom discourse events in a virtual reality (VR) classroom. Using data from a laboratory experiment with N = 240 secondary school students, we distinguished between events of teacher-centered classroom discourse (question, hand raising, answer) and teacher explanation by analyzing their transition and stationary gaze entropy. Employing multi-level regression models, both entropy measures effectively discriminated between the two events and distinguished different levels of classroom participation as indicated by the degree of hand-raising by virtual students. Furthermore, using both measures in a logistic regression model, the potential of gaze entropy could be demonstrated by predicting the two events with 67% accuracy. By analyzing transition and stationary entropy, the study attempts to uncover different gaze patterns associated with learning events in a virtual classroom. The results contribute to the research and development of VR scenarios that help to simulate effective learning environments.

Whereas meta-analytic evidence has accumulated about the important role personality characteristics such as the Big Five traits play for academic performance in secondary school, less is known about the specific behavioral and emotional repertoire that drives these associations. A closer look at the facet-level of Big Five traits can provide this knowledge helping to better understand why students differ in their success at school. We therefore studied associations between Big Five facets and academic performance (grades and standardized test scores in German and mathematics) in three independent secondary student samples (Study 1 N = 3866, Study 2 N = 2290, and Study 3 N = 366), using regression analytic, structural equation modeling, and meta-analytic procedures to test facet-level associations and incremental associations above traits. We found facet-differential associations with academic performance indicators, particularly for facets of conscientiousness, openness, and extraversion. Evidence for incremental effects of facets beyond traits was weak. Self-discipline (conscientiousness) was the only facet that consistently showed incremental effects across Samples 1 and 2. The results can stimulate research and practice to identify the underlying mechanisms that drive these associations and also highlight the specific emotional and behavioral repertoire that should be supported to help students to succeed in school. People differ in the way they act, think, and feel-their personality traits-and these trait differences have been shown to be predictive for how well students perform in school. Besides findings on the broader trait level, less is known about which specific behavioral and emotional repertoire might drive these associations. A closer look at the narrower facet-level can provide this knowledge helping to better understand why students differ in their success at school. We therefore studied associations between personality facets and academic performance (grades and standardized test scores in German and mathematics) in three independent secondary student samples (Study 1 N = 3866, Study 2 N = 2290, and Study 3 N = 366) and integrated these findings later on. Particularly, we wanted to know whether facets can explain differences in academic performance above what is explained by broader traits. We found evidence for facet-specific associations with grades and test scores; however, evidence for explanations of facets above traits was weak. Self-discipline was the only facet that explained differences above what is explained by the broader trait conscientiousness.

BackgroundMuch is known about the positive effects of teachers' self-efficacy on instruction and student outcomes, but the processes underlying these relations are unknown.AimsWe aimed to examine the effects of teacher self-efficacy for student engagement (TSESE) before a lesson on teachers' nonverbal immediacy (NVI) and their enthusiastic teaching. Furthermore, we examined how NVI and enthusiastic teaching affected students' interest after the lesson, controlling for prior interest.SampleWe used data from the German TALIS video study in the context of the international TALIS study. The study included 50 teachers (46% women) and their 1140 students (53% girls; ageM = 15 years).MethodsWe developed a computational model to assess teachers' NVI on classroom video data. Using a multimodal longitudinal approach, we tested sequential processes with multilevel path models.ResultsTSESE before the lesson (Time 1) was positively and significantly related to teachers' NVI during the lesson (Time 2). Teachers' NVI (Time 2) was positively related to class-level enthusiastic teaching behaviours, reported after the lesson (Time 3). Student-reported enthusiastic teaching behaviours (Time 3) were significantly and positively associated with students' interest (Time 3) when controlling for students' prior interest (Time 1). Students' interest after the lesson (Time 3) was significantly and positively related to students' interest 6 weeks later (Time 4).ConclusionsNonverbal behaviours of the teacher are central to classroom instruction by promoting students' perceptions of the teachers' enthusiastic teaching behaviours.

This study aimed to better understand the extent of subject specificity in students' engagement across three engagement subdimensions (emotional, behavioral, and cognitive) and over time. We assessed students' engagement in two school subjects (math and German as the language of instruction) at the beginning and end of the first year of upper secondary school (N = 1324). The results of our longitudinal bifactorial modeling showed that the subdimensions had both subject-specific and subject-independent aspects. Emotional engagement was the most subject-specific, and behavioral engagement was the most subject-independent. Subject specificity was higher for math than German and increased over the school year. Furthermore, students' self-concept, self-efficacy beliefs, interest, and grades were more related to subject-specific than subject-independent aspects, especially in math. Our results suggest that it is essential to consider the increasing subject specificity and the variability in subject specificity across dimensions when developing strategies to strengthen students' engagement. Educational Relevance: Subject-specific engagement is one of the critical factors influencing students' learning and achievement. However, little is known about how subject-specific and how general students' engagement is when they engage in a particular subject. Our study showed that subject specificity is quite high and increases over time. Our results thus encourage teachers to foster students' subject-specific engagement over and above their general tendency to engage at school - and to increase such efforts as students grow older. Given the varying subject specificity of different engagement dimensions, teachers should know that emotional engagement may tip the scales in subject-specific interventions. Separating subject-specific and subject-independent aspects of engagement might support schools in designing more targeted interventions to tackle students' disengagement. It can help to develop strategies that will lead students to become more engaged in individual subjects.

Mental rotation is the ability to rotate mental representations of objects in space. Shepard and Metzler’s shape-matching tasks, frequently used to test mental rotation, involve presenting pictorial representations of 3D objects. This stimulus material has raised questions regarding the ecological validity of the test for mental rotation with actual visual 3D objects. To systematically investigate differences in mental rotation with pictorial and visual stimuli, we compared data of $$N=54$$ N = 54 university students from a virtual reality experiment. Comparing both conditions within subjects, we found higher accuracy and faster reaction times for 3D visual figures. We expected eye tracking to reveal differences in participants’ stimulus processing and mental rotation strategies induced by the visual differences. We statistically compared fixations (locations), saccades (directions), pupil changes, and head movements. Supplementary Shapley values of a Gradient Boosting Decision Tree algorithm were analyzed, which correctly classified the two conditions using eye and head movements. The results indicated that with visual 3D figures, the encoding of spatial information was less demanding, and participants may have used egocentric transformations and perspective changes. Moreover, participants showed eye movements associated with more holistic processing for visual 3D figures and more piecemeal processing for pictorial 2D figures.

The use of gaming technologies in education holds great promise to provide engaging learning experiences. Whereas video games have been successfully used to foster learning in several school subjects, the current understanding of the potential of video games for history learning is still limited. This paper details the development of Limes, a 2D top-down educational game created in Unity and rendered in pixel art. The game targets 5th/6th grade secondary school students and is set in the third century AD in southern Germany, a period characterized by political and social instabilities. Limes digs into the complex relations between the Roman Empire and the Alemanni tribe, one of the most powerful Germanic tribes of this period. The player can experience this pixelated world through the eyes of an Alemanni child, who forms a friendship with a Roman centurion. The unfolding narrative places the young protagonist in the precarious balance of peace and conflict, and the player needs to navigate the diplomatic tensions of the era. The gameplay consists of five levels, including primary missions and optional secondary missions which unlock special features (e.g., puzzles, quizzes). Limes incorporates a variety of game mechanics, ranging from running and interacting with characters to stealth missions, throwing rocks, and horse racing. These dynamics are integrated into the historical narrative of the game, enriching the player's experience. The game development process combined insights and methods from multiple disciplines, including game-based learning, educational, social, and cultural psychology, education sciences and pedagogy, and history education. Moreover, the game capitalizes on Unity’s wide array of development tools, which provide extensive customization possibilities, and employs pixel art, facilitating an engaging environment while maintaining a cost-conscious development process. Initial tests and expert feedback highlight the promise of Limes as a game that leverages historical accuracy and innovative educational tools to foster a deeper understanding of Roman history. Next steps include empirical studies with students to test the game's effectiveness (e.g., in improving interest in and knowledge of Roman history).

The school environment is one key developmental context that is assumed to shape individual characteristics during adolescence. However, little is known about which school experiences are central to personality change or whether school experiences and personality co-shape each other over time. We address this gap by examining the longitudinal interplay between seven school experiences in the three domains of achievement, social relationships, and well-being, and the Big Five personality traits at four measurement points from fifth to eighth grade. By using data from the German TRAIN study ( N = 3,473, M ageT1 = 11.1 years, 45% female), we estimated bivariate latent growth curve models and cross-lagged panel models to illustrate this longitudinal interplay. Results demonstrated correlated change between school experiences and personality with differentiated patterns for achievement variables and a general longitudinal interplay with the social relationship and well-being variables. Furthermore, we found cross-lagged effects in both directions, although there were more effects of personality on school experiences. The most consistent predictor of school experiences was conscientiousness, whereas well-being in school in particular was related to personality change 1 year later. We integrate our findings into the current picture of personality development in adolescence and the role of school-related environmental factors.

Higher-achieving peers have repeatedly been found to negatively impact students’ evaluations of their own academic abilities (i.e., Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect). Building on social comparison theory, this pattern is assumed to result from students comparing themselves to their classmates; however, based on existing research designs, it remains unclear how exactly students make use of social comparison information in the classroom. To determine the extent to which students ( N = 353 sixth graders) actively attend and respond to social comparison information in the form of peers’ achievement-related behaviour, we used eye-tracking data from an immersive virtual reality (IVR) classroom. IVR classrooms offer unprecedented opportunities for psychological classroom research as they allow to integrate authentic classroom scenarios with maximum experimental control. In the present study, we experimentally varied virtual classmates’ achievement-related behaviour (i.e., their hand-raising in response to the teacher’s questions) during instruction, and students’ eye and gaze data showed that they actively processed this social comparison information. Students who attended more to social comparison information (as indicated by more frequent and longer gaze durations at peer learners) had less favourable self-evaluations. We discuss implications for the future use of IVR environments to study behaviours in the classroom and beyond.

In spring 2020, teaching and learning changed significantly when schools closed in order to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated the associations between teaching characteristics (teachers' communication, goals, approach to teaching) with ratings of teaching quality and students' learning experiences. Data from students (N = 3.159) in Grades 5–12, their parents (N = 1.688), and teachers (N = 459) collected online in spring/summer 2020 showed that teachers' communication with colleagues, their ability to maintain a good relationship with their students, and the time they spent on lessons were most consistently associated with teaching quality ratings as well as students’ learning experiences.

This study examined whether the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) in science education could be enhanced by providing students with relevant information about VR's usefulness before a virtual lesson. On the basis of expectancy–value theory, we manipulated students' perceived usefulness of VR by using video priming before presenting a virtual biology lesson. We then assessed how the intervention affected students' presence, interest in the virtual lesson, and learning achievement. Additionally, we tested the relationships between presence and learning outcomes. A sample of 196 students in Grade 10 was randomly assigned to a learning-usefulness condition, a daily-life-usefulness condition, or a control condition (no priming intervention) in VR. The results showed that students in both experimental conditions perceived VR as significantly more useful for learning and had greater learning achievement than those in the control condition. In addition, students in the daily-life-usefulness condition experienced less presence than those in the control condition, but there was no difference between the learning-usefulness condition and the control condition in this regard. However, the intervention had no effect on students' interest in the virtual biology lesson. Moreover, students in the two experimental conditions did not differ from each other on any of the outcomes we considered. Furthermore, the results revealed that students' presence was positively associated with their interest in the virtual lesson but was not related to their learning achievement when the intervention's effects were controlled for. These findings suggest that students' awareness of VR's usefulness could be a factor in VR's effectiveness.

ZusammenfassungDie Unterrichtsqualitätsforschung hat in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten viel zum Verständnis der Merkmale beitragen, die einen qualitätsvollen Unterricht auszeichnen. Sie hat einflussreiche Modelle hervorgebracht, die eine gemeinsame Grundlage für die Erforschung des Unterrichts bereitstellen. Gleichzeitig bringen gesellschaftliche Veränderungsprozesse eine Neuorientierung des schulischen Unterrichts mit sich, und es lässt sich fragen, ob die Unterrichtsqualitätsforschung mit ihren bisherigen Ansätzen in der Lage ist, in Zukunft zum Gelingen von Unterricht beizutragen. Im Rahmen einer Zukunftswerkstatt hat das Leibniz-Netzwerk Unterrichtsforschung daher einen längerfristig angelegten Prozess gestartet, um sich mit dem Unterricht der Zukunft zu beschäftigen und zu versuchen, drängende Fragen und Handlungsfelder für die Unterrichtsqualitätsforschung zu identifizieren. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt die Ergebnisse dieses initialen Austauschs dar. Zudem wird ein Einblick in die gegenwärtige Arbeit im Netzwerk gegeben, die aufbauend auf den Ergebnissen der Zukunftswerkstatt eine Weiterentwicklung der Unterrichtsqualitätsforschung anstrebt.

Academic self-concept plays a central role in successful learning and is substantially shaped by social comparisons. Research on the so-called Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (BFLPE) has yielded a highly robust and generalizable pattern of negative effects of higher class/school average achievement on students' self-concept when controlling for individual achievement. However, most BFLPE studies have not provided information about the causes behind or the mechanisms underlying the proposed effects. To address this, we used a fully immersive virtual reality (IVR) classroom to experimentally test the extent to which students recognized performance-related classroom behavior as implicit social comparison information and how these perceptions explained differences in students' self-concepts. Participants (N = 381 sixth-grade students) experienced an authentic yet standardized IVR teaching situation with virtual classmates who exhibited different performance levels (operationalized as 20% vs. 35% vs. 65% vs. 80% of classmates raising their hands). Hand-raising behavior had a significant positive effect on students' perceptions of the class' performance level (d20% vs. 65% = 0.60; d20% vs. 80% = 1.24). In line with the BFLPE, results showed a negative effect of higher performing classmates on students' situational self-concept (d20% vs. 80% = 0.30). Students' perceptions of the class' performance level fully explained the effect of classmates' hand-raising behavior on students' situational self-concept. The study's experimental approach provided new insights into the emergence of social comparison effects in the classroom, highlighting the major role of students' perceptions of their classmates' performance-related behavior, and moreover demonstrated the general potential of using IVR in classroom research.