Teachers’ beliefs about educational quality : Examining the power of school settings through survey experiments

This study aims to characterize teachers' beliefs on determinants of educational quality and the influence of school settings. A factorial survey experiment with a probabilistic sample of 1285 Chilean primary school teachers is used to identify the causal attributions of the quality of teacher–student relations and learning methodologies in schools. Results indicate that teachers believe that decisional power and income satisfaction are the most important determinants of relational quality, while planning preparation and a multidisciplinary team of professionals are the most crucial for the quality of learning methodologies. Moreover, schools' characteristics affect teachers’ causal beliefs about educational quality.