Abstract #3165

Abstract: The concept of instructional quality is at the core of educational research, being it through explicit investigation of effective instructional practices; theoretical discussions about the concept; or through implicit notions of what instructional quality is and what society wants to achieve through education. Much effort has been made to identify high-quality instruction across subjects (e.g. Hattie, 2009; Kyriakides et al., 2013). Attempts to characterize high-quality instruction have also been made within the international L1 field (Grossmann et al. 2015). However, there exists no systematic overview of high-quality teaching targeting the entire L1 subject in secondary school. To support dialogue between the L1-related research sub-fields and between research and the L1 teachers responsible for this complex subject, the purpose of this study is to synthesize the current research base in secondary L1 education to determine how instructional quality is defined in the literature and what kind of measurement strategies are used.

To identify relevant research publications, we first established the search terms, beginning with four main terms (quality, instruction, L1, secondary school), and identified related concepts for these terms. Second, we created, tested out, and revised search strings using a combination of the identifiers. Third, we performed literature searches in databases ERIC and Scopus, limited to peer reviewed research journal articles published in English between January 2000 and June 2023. The identified records were exported to the EPPI reviewer 6 web-based software program, where 912 unique publications were screened at title and abstract level, and 179 at full-text level.

Preliminary results show that the concept of quality is rarely explicitly stated, but rather implicitly communicated through the measures applied. Most studies rely on concepts and measures of quality of instruction tied to particular L1 sub-disciplines or skills (e.g. literature, argumentation, assessment, reading- or writing strategies). Although insight into these individual fields is important for high-quality L1 instruction, it must be acknowledged that the knowledge structure of the L1 subject – as a whole – is integrative in ways that individual components are not. Such integrative knowledge is crucial for well-targeted decisions regarding future teacher professional development (TPD), teacher education and policy.

References
Grossman, P., Cohen, J., & Brown, L. (2015). Understanding Instructional Quality in English Language Arts: Variations in PLATO Scores by Content and Context. I T. J. Kane, K. A. Kerr, & R. C. Pianta (Red.), Designing Teacher Evaluation Systems (1. utg., s. 303–331). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119210856.ch10

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.
Kyriakides, L., Christoforou, C., & Charalambous, C. Y. (2013). What matters for student learning outcomes: A meta-analysis of studies exploring factors of effective teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 36, 143–152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.07.010

Quality in L1 instruction. A systematic literature review