Opportunity to Learn and Students from Economically Disadvantages Homes: Implications for School Leaders Through an Examination of Talis 2013

Abstract

The proposed paper examines the relationship between student socioeconomic status (SES) and opportunity to learn (OTL), as indicated by teacher quality and instructional time, using a recent large dataset available, the 2013 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) Teacher Questionnaire. The guiding research of the comparative quantitative study is, “To what extent does student opportunity to learn differ between classes with different proportions of disadvantaged students, and how does that relationship vary by country?” Researchers consider these findings in light of various leadership theories to propose implications for school leaders.Many researchers (Growe & Montgomery, 2003; Mayer, 1997; Murnane, 2007; Toutkoushian & Curtis, 2005) have found a strong relationship between student socioeconomic status (SES) and student achievement. In his influential report, Coleman (1966) found one standard deviation gap in academic achievement between students in poverty and affluent students in parts of the United States. Recent research (e.g., Chudgar & Luschei, 2009) provides strong support that the relative influence of SES upon student achievement still varies by economic context, including overall levels of poverty and inequality, across many countries. Still other research (e.g., Carnoy, et al., 2013) supports that family academic resources (FAR) is second only to previous learning and achievement in predicting student achievement using international data. Researchers such as Walberg (1989) argued that student achievement should not be studied without considering SES.Determining that a relationship exists between student SES and achievement does not explain the mechanisms for these disparities. Opportunity to Learn (OTL) is a framework for connecting teacher practice to student achievement. The term was possibly first coined by John B. Carroll (1963) to describe the amount of time devoted to student learning (cited in Schmidt et al., 2013). More recently, researchers (e.g. Wang, 1998) have determined through hierarchical linear modeling that OTL is a multidimensional construct and suggest it should be measured at different levels, for example, the classroom and individual student levels. This group of research (e.g., Schmidt et al., 1999; Schmidt et al. 2001) has used OTL to encompass both time and exposure to relevant pedagogical content (cited in Schmidt et al., 2013). This builds on earlier research, such as that of Gamoran and Berends (1987), which explored the relationships between student achievement and exposure to challenging content through academic tracking. Other research, including the paper by USAID, Opportunity to Learn: A high impact strategy for improving educational outcomes in developing countries, emphasize that OTL can include instructional time, student-teacher ratio, and access to educational resources such as qualified teachers (EQUIP, 2008).Akiba, LeTendre, and Scribner (2007) conducted cross-national, empirical analyses of the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data from 46 countries, measuring teacher quality and student access to quality teachers (opportunity gap). The researchers defined qualified teachers across countries by using four characteristics of teacher quality that have been linked with student achievement in past studies: (a) full certification, (b) mathematics major, (c) mathematics education major, and (d) teaching experience of three or more years. In addition to these four measures of teacher quality, the researchers also developed an overall measure of teacher quality based on the percentage of students taught by mathematics teachers who were fully certified, who majored in mathematics or mathematics education, and who had three or more years of teaching experience. By utilizing an overall measure of teacher quality, the researchers believed they would be able to examine the cumulative impact of multiple indicators of teacher quality and the impact of each individual characteristic. When the researchers examined potential differences in student opportunity to have access to fully certified teachers with mathematics or mathematics education majors and with at least three years of experience, Syria, Chile, Taiwan and the United States had the largest opportunity gap between high- and low-SES students.