Measuring the potential for cognitive activation via teaching materials in mathematics lessons

A central challenge of instructional research is to measure teaching characteristics appropriately. The assessment of (filmed) instruction by trained raters is regarded as the best way to achieve this, but is associated with high organizational and time costs. In this paper, we present a newly developed instrument for assessing the teaching quality characteristic potential for cognitive activation (PCA). The instrument was developed for mathematics lessons on the topic of quadratic equations. It is based on the joint evaluation of all instructional artifacts of a lesson (lesson plans, student assignments, assessments, etc.) by trained raters and measures the potential for cognitive activation brought into the classroom by the teacher in writing. The validity of the intended interpretation as an indicator for the written PCA of a lesson is examined by an argument-based approach and can be supported by various pieces of evidence: For example, a decision study shows that the instrument can already be reliably assessed by a single rater. Furthermore, it correlates substantially with a measurement of the PCA based on video ratings.