ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Teacher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1671376
The Evolving Definition of Quality: How Teacher Experience and Subject Domain Shape Perceptions of Instructional Materials
Provisionally accepted
- 1eduki, Berlin, Germany
- 2The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
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This study examined how teachers' approaches to evalua@ng instruc@onal material quality evolve across career stages. We surveyed 2,102 educators from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, all ac@ve users of the eduki plaOorm. Through exploratory factor analysis and mul@variate analysis of variance (MANOVA), we iden@fied three dis@nct response pa]erns in how teachers evaluate materials: teacher percep@ons of peer-created material quality, pedagogical and structural characteris@cs of high-quality materials, and teacher-centric considera@ons and prac@cal benefits. Results show that teachers' priori@es across these evalua@on approaches vary significantly with experience. The overall MANOVA was sta@s@cally significant (Wilks' Lambda = 0.89, F(81, 4476) = 1.97, p < .001). Early-career teachers emphasize peer-created materials for lesson delivery (M = 4.34, SD = 0.69) and professional development (M = 3.88, SD = 0.87), along with s@mula@ng content (M = 4.16, SD = 0.95) and curriculum compliance (M = 3.85, SD = 0.96). In contrast, experienced teachers priori@ze prac@cal benefits such as ease of use (M = 3.84, SD = 0.93), technology integra@on (M = 3.29, SD = 0.94), support for diverse learning needs (M = 3.85, SD = 0.88), and inclusion of current research (M = 3.34, SD = 0.90), with effect sizes ranging from small to moderate (d = -0.33 to 0.54). The greatest differences were observed between early-career and experienced teachers. These findings indicate that quality evalua@on is a developmental process that evolves with teaching exper@se. We propose a career-responsive approach to material development with implica@ons for content design, professional development, and plaOorm personaliza@on.
Keywords: Teaching Materials, teacher development, Material quality percep@on, professional growth, Instruc@onal design, Quality criteria, Career-stage differen@a@on, Peer-created materials
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Garay Abad and Hattie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lola Garay Abad, lola.reevesgaray@eduki.com
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