By WCER Communications
WCER Director Courtney Bell recently delivered an opening-day keynote address to kick off a three-day conference in Oslo, Norway, on analysis of teaching quality attended by more than 120 education researchers from 13 countries. The conference also featured symposium presentations by Multilingual Learning Research Center (MLRC) leaders Mariana Castro and Esther Bettney Heidt.
Sponsored by the University of Oslo, the 5th annual QUINT Conference gathered leading scholars to discuss many aspects of measuring teaching quality, with a focus on instruments of assessment and on ways to improve professionally.
Bell’s presentation explored the historical and scientific context of measuring teaching quality.
“Teaching quality matters — in every country, for all students,” Bell said. “But the field does not agree on or use measures of teaching quality that satisfy common considerations for reliability, validity, and practicality.”
Castro, the MLRC’s qualitative research director, organized a symposium for the conference about teaching quality and the school experiences of multilingual learners. She also presented a paper during the symposium on a framework to support multilingual learners through core teaching. Bettney Heidt, the MLRC’s school network researcher, also presented a paper, this one examining international school teachers’ language ideologies.