Quality of pedagogy and student achievement: multi-level replication of authentic pedagogy

This paper presents SIPA's initial, cross-sectional, analysis of the relationship between pedagogy and student outcomes, when measured in terms of the Quality Teaching model and in-class student performance respectively. Following the school effects tradition, the analysis is based on multi-level modelling in which students' prior achievement, socio-economic status, gender, race and NESB status are taken as background variables. Measures for pedagogy are based on classroom observations and task coding of the three dimensions of pedagogy defined in the Quality Teaching model, Intellectual Quality, Quality Learning Environment and Significance and the Authentic Pedagogy constructs on which the Quality Teaching model was based. The outcome variable in this modelling is Newmann and Associates' (1996) Authentic Achievement scale, applied to student work samples gathered from observed classes. This is the first quantitative analysis of the efficacy of the Quality Teaching model for predicting student outcomes and has implications for the viability of the model and its predecessors. In essence this is a replication and expansion of the work reported by Newmann, Marks and Gamoran (1996), Newmann, Lopez & Bryk (1998) and Newmann, Bryk, & Nagaoka (2001). As such, it offers the first rigorous test of the cross-national transportability of Authentic Pedagogy.