Cognitive activation in student questionnaires - Distinguishing between the potential for cognitive activation and individual cognitive activation

Cognitive activation in student questionnaires - Distinguishing between the potential for cognitive activation and individual cognitive activationAbstract. Cognitive activation is a dimension of teaching quality which focusses on specific actions and tasks by the teacher, which are expected to stimulate intensive learning. Empirical evidence on the connection between cognitive activation and achievement is inconsistent. One possible explanation for this may lie in the conceptualization and operationalization of cognitive activation. Theoretically two different facets of cognitive activation can be identified: The potential for cognitive activation is a classroom characteristic which describes teacher behavior which aims to stimulate cognitive processes in students. Individual cognitive activation focusses on students' experiences of their class and is thus an individual-level variable. Previously used questionnaires have employed items for both facets of cognitive activation without systematically differentiating between them. The present study uses data from the German PIRLS 2016 sample to investigate the connections between the different operationalizations of cognitive activation and primary school students reading achievement. Using data from 3797 fourth-graders from 192 classrooms in a multilevel CFA we find that the items from each operationalization form a distinct factor. Further we find different connections for each operationalization with students' reading achievement: the potential for cognitive activation is positively related to students' reading achievement on the classroom level. Items representing individual cognitive activation only showed a negative connection to students' reading achievement on the individual level. These results show the implications of different operationalizations of the same construct for further analysis. Thereby, our results contribute to the explanation of the hitherto unclear findings regarding the connection between cognitive activation and students' learning. Further, our results stress the need to examen questionnaire items which assess the cognitive challenge experienced by students in more detail.