Teaching quality and teachers’ professional competences – their measurement, relevance, and association in adult education
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Teachers’ professional competences are known to have an important influence on teaching quality. Yet, mainly due to a lack of validated measures, both have hardly been studied in Adult and Continuing Education (ACE) to date. With data from the German TAEPS Project, this study addresses this gap in three steps. First, we examine the applicability of research instruments that have been developed to measure teaching quality and professional competences of schoolteachers for the ACE context. Second, we investigate the items’ perceived relevance for different ACE courses. And lastly, we examine the association between ACE teachers’ competences (including their beliefs, motivational orientations, and self-regulation) and their teaching quality. Except for specific subdimensions of classroom management and student support, our findings provide evidence that the investigated scales are generally transferable to ACE. Yet, descriptive analyses reveal substantial differences in their perceived relevance depending on the construct and course type, with generally lower relevance ratings for behaviourally oriented courses. Regression analyses show a positive link between self-efficacy and enthusiasm with classroom management, yet a negative association with self-regulation. Student support is positively related to self-efficacy, enthusiasm, and constructivist beliefs, whereas constructivist beliefs, self-efficacy, and self-reflection are predictive of cognitive activation. We discuss implications for research on ACE teachers’ professional competences and teaching quality.
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4411992139