Importance in instructional text: Teachers' and students' perceptions of task demands.

History teachers (N = 22) and their 11th-grade students (N = 451) rated the relative importance of sections of an instructional text on which teachers would be giving a test. Multilevel analysis revealed only a moderate correspondence between teachers in their importance ratings. This suggested that there were large differences between the task demands of individual teachers; therefore, students needed to attune to the demands their own teacher set. However, only a moderate correspondence was found between ratings of individual students and those of their teacher. Although this correspondence varied between teachers, between students, and between text sections, results suggest that in general, the participating students did not have a very clear or sound perception of task demands.