Effects of cue availability on primary school teachers' accuracy and confidence in their judgments of students’ mathematics performance

Abstract

We investigated how the accuracy of teachers' judgments of their students' performance on procedural mathematical tasks, as well as their confidence in that, can be improved. Thirty-three primary school teachers judged how their students (N = 553) would perform on a multiplication and division task, with and without having access to performance cues (i.e., students' performance on similar tasks completed one week earlier). When available, teachers mostly seemed to base their judgments on performance cues. Availability of performance cues improved teachers’ judgment accuracy, resulted in higher confidence in their judgment accuracy, and increased awareness of their judgment (in)accuracy.