Teachers’ information processing and judgement accuracy: effects of information consistency and accountability

Research has shown that teachers are able to adapt their processing strategy of student information to situational demands, whereby they flexibly use either an automatic and category-based strategy or a controlled and information-integrating strategy. However, the effect of teachers’ accountability for task and the consistency of student information on strategy use is less clear. In two experimental studies, teachers were presented with consistent and inconsistent student profiles, whereby accountability levels were systematically varied. In the first study, the attention to and memory of information were investigated as indicators of changes in information processing strategy. In the second study, resulting changes in judgement accuracy were investigated. Results of study 1 provided support for the theoretical assumption that people apply the category-based strategy when confronted with consistent information under low accountability conditions, while inconsistent information and high accountability conditions led to the use of information-integration strategy. Results of study 2 showed that teachers’ judgement accuracy generally increased in relation to high accountability conditions and to lesser extent profile consistency, whereby inaccuracy reflected both under- and overestimation of student ability. The combined results suggest that the use of differential information processing strategies not only leads to differences in the attention to and processing of information, but also results in differences in the quality of judgements and decision making, especially under high accountability conditions.