Identifying exemplary science teachers through students' perceptions of their learning environment

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine students' psychosocial perceptions of their science classroom learning environment in order to identity exemplary teachers. This mixed-method study used the valid and reliable questionnaire, What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC), with over 3,000 middle school students in 150 classrooms in Australia. Exemplary teachers were defined as those whose students' perceptions were more than one standard deviation above the mean on three of the five scales of Student Cohesiveness, Teacher Support, Involvement, Task Orientation, and Equity. The reliability of the WIHIC scales ranged from 0.75-0.87. Eta2 showed that the WIHIC was able to distinguish between perceptions of the students in the classroom. This factor was used to identify exemplary teachers. The construct validity of the WIHIC to identify these exemplary teachers was confirmed through interviews with students and these views are reported in the article.