Internal quality assurance in education: an instrument for the assessment of interpersonal teaching skills

Recent developments in education, such as increased budgetary freedom of schools, more demanding and active parents or students, and publication of ratings of school performance in newspapers and on the Internet, force schools to provide more and more information on their quality and their efforts to uphold it. Because of this increased external pressure on quality assurance, schools and similar institutions also increase their efforts in internal quality assurance. As a consequence, there is a growing need for instruments that contribute to the process of internal quality assurance. A major role in the quality of a school and the learning of its students is played by the teacher. This argument is supported by research from several educational domains, such as educational effectiveness research (e.g. Creemers, 1994), learning environments research (e.g. Fraser, 1998) and educational psychology (e.g. Shuell, 1996). This paper discusses an instrument that can be used for internal quality assurance and that assesses the quality of interaction between students and teachers. Interaction is one of the most important factors in teaching, as it directly relates to order in the classroom, one of the most common problem areas in education according to teachers (Veenman, 1984). The instrument is called the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI), and is one of the most widely used instruments for assessment of teachers – but also school management – in the Netherlands, Australia and United States. The structure of this paper is as follows. First, the theoretical framework behind the instrument is presented. Second, a description of the actual instrument is given, followed by an outline of the procedure used in working with the instrument. When discussing this procedure, the role of students is also discussed. Finally, avenues for improvement of teacher quality and applications of the instruments, including some research, are provided