Research questions and hypotheses
Students’ judgements
• To what extent do the students of a class agree in their ratings of classroom disruptions,
the teacher student relationship and classroom management? In order to distinguish
students’ individual perceptions from students’ shared perceptions at the class level,
data were examined using multilevel analysis and intraclass correlations were deter-
mined.
In accordance with prior research, we anticipated that the intraclass correlations
in student assessments within classes regarding various items and factors to reach the
minimum criterion of 5% (ICC > 0.05; Lüdtke et al. 2009) in order to aggregate student
perceptions into class-mean ratings (Hypothesis 1).
• Do students rate class teachers’ instruction more positively than subject teachers’
instruction? As students spend more time with class teachers, we anticipated that they would rate class teachers’ instruction more positively than subject teachers’ (Hypothesis 2).
Students’ and teachers’ judgements
• Do teachers’ and students’ ratings of disruptions, the teacher student relationship and
classroom management correspond? Whereas we anticipated good agreement between
students’ and teachers’ judgements of disruptions, we anticipated far less agreement on
the teacher student relationship and classroom management (Hypothesis 3).
Observers’ judgements
• What forms of disruption, whether caused by students or teachers, can be identified by
external observers in class teachers’ and subject teachers’ classrooms? We assumed
that disruptions would emanate from students as well as from teachers, that they would
be more nonaggressive than aggressive, and that more disruptions would occur in subject teachers’ classrooms than in class teachers’ (Hypothesis 4).
Observer, teacher and student judgements
• How well do disruptions coded as low–inference by external observers correspond
with students’ and teacher’s disruption ratings? We anticipated that the systematic
observation results would correspond better with students’ judgements than teachers’
judgements.
The highest agreement was anticipated for low-inference classroom characteristics, such as nonaggressive and aggressive student disruptions and methodological didactic setting disruptions, while far less observer agreement was anticipated on the judgement of high-inference characteristics such as the teacher–student relationship and classroom management (Hypothesis 5).