Teaching Quality and Educational Equity. Evidence from TIMSS Grade Eight Science Classrooms in Sweden

Abstract

Despite the recognized importance of teacher practices for student learning, research on teachers’ impact on student outcomes has largely been conducted outside the Nordic context and has focused predominantly on mathematics. This dissertation examines whether teaching quality can promote educational equity in science by mitigating the influence of socioeconomic status on Grade 8 student achievement in Sweden. Grounded in the Teacher Quality Framework, the Three Basic Dimensions of Teaching Quality, Expectancy-Value Theory, and the Opportunity to Learn framework, the dissertation investigates relationships among teachers’ generic and subject-specific cognitive activation practices, instructional clarity, teacher characteristics, classroom SES composition, students’ motivational beliefs, and achievement in biology, chemistry, and physics. Using Swedish TIMSS data from 2015, 2019, and 2023, it applies confirmatory factor analysis, multilevel structural equation modeling, and student fixed-effects analyses, drawing on student- and teacher-reported measures of instructional practices, student-reported motivational beliefs, and achievement outcomes. Across the studies, the results show limited evidence that teachers’ cognitive activation practices predict science achievement or mitigate socioeconomic disparities. Study I showed no evidence that cognitive activation mediated associations between contextual factors and achievement or weakened the relationship between students’ home educational resources and achievement, although teaching experience was positively related to biology achievement and to hands-on scientific practices in chemistry and physics. Study II showed that students’ motivational beliefs, particularly confidence, were positively associated with achievement across biology, chemistry, and physics. Instructional clarity was not directly associated with achievement but was positively related to students’ motivational beliefs and classroom motivation climate, and in chemistry it was indirectly related to achievement through motivational pathways. By contrast, teachers’ cognitive activation practices showed no significant mediating role, whereas classroom SES composition remained strongly related to achievement, indicating limited evidence that teaching quality mediated socioeconomic differences in science achievement. Study III found no within-student effects of generic or subject-specific cognitive activation on science achievement and no evidence that their effectiveness varied by students’ socioeconomic status. Taken together, the findings highlight the importance of socioeconomic context for science achievement and indicate that the compensatory role of the examined teaching quality dimensions is limited in Swedish lower secondary science classrooms. The results underscore the need for further research on the conditions and mechanisms through which teaching practices translate into learning gains and educational equity in biology, chemistry, and physics.