Teacher-assigned grades and external exams: sources of discrepancy.

Modest correlations between teacher-assigned grades and external assessments of academic achievement (r = .40-.60) have led many educational stakeholders to deem grades subjective and unreliable. However, theoretical and methodological challenges, such as construct misalignment, data unavailability and sample unrepresentativeness, limit the generalisability of previous findings. We overcome these challenges by exploiting rich, population-wide data from the National Registries in Norway (n = 511,858), where state regulations require close construct alignment between grades and external exams. Correlations between lower-secondary education final grades and external exam results (r = .64-.86) suggest that grades are better measures of academic achievement than previously acknowledged. Dominance analyses and multivariate regression analyses indicate that external exam results are the best predictor of grades in the same subject. However, our results also indicate that state regulations and quality assurance systems cannot completely eradicate potential sources of discrepancy.

The Role of Intelligence and Self-Concept for Teachers' Competence.

Research on intelligence and competence has developed widely independent of each other. The present paper aims at relating these traditions and at integrating the dominant models to fill gaps in the respective theories. We test the structural models derived from this integration in a series of confirmatory factor analyses and a latent moderated structural equations approach using teachers as an example. The data reveal that both fluid intelligence (gf) and domain-specific knowledge affect teachers' ability to solve the domain-specific items. Teachers' academic self-concept related to mathematics explains individual differences beyond gf. An interaction effect between gf and self-concept exists for teachers' pedagogical content and general pedagogical knowledge, but not for their mathematics knowledge. This finding indicates that a positive self-concept cannot compensate for a lack of gf, but it supports the acquisition of domain-specific knowledge in case of high gf, probably because it facilitates overcoming challenges.

Absolute and Relative Judgment Accuracy: Early Childhood Teachers' Competence to Evaluate Children's Mathematical Skills.

This study examined absolute and relative judgment accuracies of German early childhood (EC) teachers with respect to the mathematical skills of the children under their supervision. The two types of judgment accuracies are crucial prerequisites for pacing activities in EC education and offering differentiated educational activities adapted to individual skill levels of children. Data from 39 EC teachers and 268 children were analyzed using multilevel modeling. Teachers rated the skills of children on a structured observation instrument ("Kinder Diagnose Tool," KiDiT). Children were assessed on their mathematical skills with a standardized test ("Mathematische Basiskompetenzen im Kindesalter," MBK-0). On average, 65% of the variation in judgments of teachers on the KiDiT could be explained by MBK-0 scores of children, which suggest that teachers are-on average-able to rank children within their groups. Teachers were also able to judge the mathematical level of skills of children as assessed by the MBK-0. Neither mathematical content knowledge (MCK) of teachers nor their mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) or general pedagogical knowledge (GPK) moderated the relationship between judgments of teachers and test scores of children or the relationship between the level of the judgments and the level of test scores. Conclusions for future research and practice are drawn.