Methodologies for Investigating and Interpreting Student-Teacher Rating Incongruence in Noncognitive Assessment

Numerous studies merely note divergence in students' and teachers' ratings of student noncognitive constructs. However, given the increased attention and use of these constructs in educational research and practice, an in-depth study focused on this issue was needed. Using a variety of quantitative methodologies, we thoroughly investigate student-teacher in congruence with two commonly assessed noncognitive constructs: intrinsic motivation and time management. We present ways to describe, visualize, and predict differences between student and teacher ratings and discuss implications for interpretation. We show how descriptive and predictive analyses that consider the nesting of students within teachers expand our understanding of the incongruence. We demonstrate the importance of considering ancillary variables in predictive analysis, and latent variable methods for comparing measurement models. We found that student and teacher factors exhibited only small-to-moderate correlations, reinforcing the need for more measurement research in this area. Further, we report that teachers tended to rate students more favorably than students rate themselves, and teachers' ratings were more related to student performance. We discuss how these methodologies can be used to better understand the incongruence between students and teachers and how they can be incorporated into construct validation studies.