The impact of class size on teacher performance in relation to formative assessment in rural schools in Chile

Abstract

The objective of the study reported on here was to compare teaching performance in formative assessment between monograde and multigrade classes by class size, and to verify whether an association between teaching performance and class size existed in rural schools. A descriptive study was conducted on a representative sample of 539 elementary school students from rural schools in Chile. In monograde classes, better teaching performance was observed in students in large classes (83.3±12.3 points) compared to those in the medium (77.7±14.4 points) and small (77.4±14.4 points) classes ( p < 0.01). In multigrade classes, the best teaching performance was observed in large classes (75.16±16.0 points), followed by medium (60.9±8.7 points) and small (61.6±18.4 points) classes. However, the results of a comparison between the 2 course modalities (monograde and multigrade) indicate better teaching performance in monograde classes than in multigrade classes. Furthermore, better teaching performance was observed in large classes in both modalities. However, the best teaching performance was observed in the monograde modality. In addition, we verified an association between teaching performance and class size.