When classmates influence teacher judgment accuracy of students’ cognitive ability: Studying frame-of-reference effects in primary school

Abstract

Cognitive ability is one major component of students’ academic potential. On average, teachers are quite accurate in judging their students’ cognitive ability, but there is considerable variance between teachers. To explain this, the relevant literature discusses several influencing factors on teacher judgment accuracy. One of those factors concerns the composition of a school class (frame-of-reference effect). We investigated the effects of class-average cognitive ability on teacher judgment accuracy of their students’ cognitive ability. We carried out multilevel analyses with a sample of N = 1576 German primary school students in N = 106 classrooms (grades one to four), and a subsample of n = 1043 students in n = 70 classrooms (grades three and four). Our results revealed a medium negative effect (B = -0.15 to -0.16) of class-average cognitive ability on teacher judgments. Moreover, the class-average cognitive ability moderated the accuracy of teachers’ judgments (B = -0.05; only in the entire sample): teachers judged most accurately in classrooms with an average cognitive ability level, whereas they tended to underestimate students in classrooms with an above-average cognitive ability level, and to overestimate students in classrooms with a below-average cognitive ability level.