Working at the Nexus of Generic and Content-Specific Teaching Practices: An Exploratory Study Based on TIMSS Secondary Analyses

For years scholars have attended to either generic or content-specific teaching practices attempting to understand instructional quality and its effects on student learning. Drawing on the TIMSS 2007 and 2011 databases, this exploratory study empirically tests the hypothesis that attending to both types of practices can help better explain student performance. Capitalizing on one generic and one content-specific framework, we tested this hypothesis for grade 8 mathematics. The analyses for the entire sample showed that more variance was explained when considering both types of practices in tandem than that explained when considering each type in isolation. Important insights were also gleaned when testing this hypothesis for each individual country, since notable differences were observed across participating countries. In discussing the study findings, which were relatively consistent across the two TIMSS cycles, we draw implications for the development of theoretical frameworks capturing instructional quality and the design of international comparative studies.