The Diagnostic Skills of Mathematics Teachers

Teachers apply their diagnostic skills when grading students’ work as well as when preparing lessons and monitoring students’ understanding during the learning process. Previous research on teachers’ diagnostic skills has focused on teachers at elementary level. Drawing on a large German sample of mathematics teachers at secondary level, this chapter empirically addresses three key questions on teachers’ diagnostic skills (depending on the research question, the number of teachers with valid data varied between n=155 and n=331). The results showed that (a) the accuracy of teachers’ judgments of their classes’ achievement level, distribution of achievement, and motivation is relatively low, (b) diagnostic skills do not represent a one-dimensional but a multidimensional construct, and (c) teachers’ diagnostic skills (in terms of tasks-related judgment error and diagnostic sensitivity) have a positive influence on their students’ achievement gains in mathematics. Training and fostering teachers’ diagnostic skills seems thus to be highly relevant for the valid assignment of grades and for student progress.

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