The Impact of Misalignment between Student and Teacher Evaluation of Student Skills on Middle School Student Motivation in Computer Science

Misalignment between student and teacher evaluation of student skills has been shown to have a negative impact on student performance and has potential to impact students' belief in their abilities. Expectancy-value theory is the theory that one's belief in their ability to accomplish a task has an impact on their motivation and persistence to continue with that task. This paper explores whether and how misalignment exists and how it is connected to other elements of expectancy-value theory: self-efficacy, interest, and task-value, by analyzing survey results of middle school students' and their teachers' ratings of the students' problem-solving skills. The population studied was 92 middle school students and their teachers from a total of 8 urban and rural schools in a largely rural state, with a teacher from each school. We also explored trends related to gender, racial, socio-economic, and geographic demographics, and found a connection between geographic location and misalignment. We found that teachers in rural areas were more likely to rate their students' skills lower than the students rated themselves, compared to teachers in urban areas. Through cluster analysis, we further found that this misalignment had a negative impact on factors related to students' motivation over time. We provide approaches to address misalignment and narrow the gap between teacher and student evaluation of student skills.