Students Reading Text-Picture-Material: The Role of Teacher Competence and Instructional Quality

Learning material often consists of texts and instructional pictures, meaning the reader must extract and integrate information from two sources. Research shows that students' skills in integrating texts and pictures already vary in early secondary school. Teachers' professional competence and quality of instruction are important influences on the development of student's skills. Therefore, this study examines teachers' professional competence in teaching with texts, instructional pictures, and instructional quality as predictors for developing students' text- picture-integration skills. Data from 136 fourth-grade teachers were collected in Germany. A subsample of 34 teachers and 646 fourth graders participated in a video study investigating instructional quality. In a longitudinal study, we assessed teachers' competence in teaching with texts and instructional pictures via questionnaires and tested students' text-picture-integration-skills. In between, three lessons involving texts and instructional pictures were videotaped and analysed. Multilevel regression models showed a small positive direct effect of teachers' knowledge about student abilities on students' text-picture-integration-skills. Furthermore, aspects of teachers' competence were positively related to instructional quality, whereas "clarity and structure" positively predicted students' text-picture-integration-skills. The presented paper contributes to research on text-picture-integration in primary school and how teachers and instruction can facilitate it.