Professional vision of inclusive classrooms: A validation of teachers’ reasoning on differentiated instruction and teacher-student interactions

Abstract

Because of the evolution towards inclusive education, professional vision becomes a central skill, which is teachers’ ability to notice and reason about classroom situations. Two aspects are quintessential for maximal learning outcomes among diverse learners: positive teacher-student interactions (PTSI) and differentiated instruction (DI). Consequently, this study validates an instrument to measure teachers’ reasoning with regard to PTSI and DI using explorative and confirmatory factor analyses. A total of 991 teachers and 3011 pre-service teachers indicated how crucial PTSI- and DI-arguments were in their comparative judgement of videoclips. Results show that the latent construct of PTSI consist of three subdimensions: individual needs, safe & structured environment, and student involvement. The latent construct of DI consists of four subdimensions: active learning, instructional clarity, adaptive teaching, and flexible grouping. The robustness of these findings across contexts demonstrates the centrality of these dimensions in teachers’ reasoning about inclusive classrooms.