“The Teacher Motivates Us – Or Me?” – The Role of the Addressee in Student Ratings of Teacher Support

Student ratings have become a standard way to assess teaching quality. However, little is known about whether using a we/us-addressee (“The teacher motivates us”) or an I/me-addressee (“The teacher motivates me”) makes a difference for the information that is obtained. In this study, we experimentally varied the addressee in teaching-quality items capturing six dimensions of teacher support in two school subjects. We investigated differences between the two addressee versions in mean levels, level of agreement, associations between dimensions using the same versus different addressees, and correlations with a variety of student outcome variables. We found that the item addressee was relevant for most psychometric properties in question, and differences were more pronounced for mathematics than for German language arts.