Comparing teacher and student perspectives on the interplay of cognitive and motivational-affective student characteristics

For students, cognitive and motivational-affective characteristics are the most powerful prerequisites for successful learning. For teachers, judgments on their students’ characteristics shape how they plan and implement instructional activities in order to offer individual learning support. On the student side, research is starting to find out more about the interplay of different characteristics within individual students. On the teacher side, studies still regard teacher judgment accuracy of only single characteristics. By taking a person-centered approach, regarding NS = 503 students and their NT = 41 mathematics and languages arts teachers, our manuscript joined teacher and student perspectives on student characteristics interplay and suggests methodology to compare them. We found that student assessments suggested ample diversity regarding this interplay–and teachers did not perceive this. In their views, “homogeneous” sets of average characteristics were dominant. Findings suggest addressing students’ views and the diagnosis of their characteristics in teacher education to enable individual support.