Is instructional support that supportive? A second-order meta-analysis of factors associated with cognitive activation in classrooms

High instructional quality is consistently and positively related to students' outcomes such as achievement and motivation. To capture instructional quality, researchers have developed various frameworks with differing conceptualizations and operationalizations of “quality”. These frameworks comprise different components of teaching. Besides classroom management and the student-teacher relationship, one common key component of instructional quality is cognitive activation (CA, Klieme
et al., 2009). CA focuses on facilitating engaged learning and deeper understanding of learning content. In other common frameworks, this component of teaching is labeled as instructional support or cognitive demand. Due to the variability in the conceptualization of CA, research on it is fragmented, hampering an overall understanding of CA’s educational value. To address this gap, this second-order meta-analysis synthesizes existing meta-analyses about CA and its role in instructional
quality frameworks. Following PRISMA guidelines and using SPIDER-based inclusion criteria, we search grey literature and the databases Education Research Complete, ERIC, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science for meta-analyses on CA in educational contexts. The aim is to quantify the overall effect of CA on teaching-related outcomes, to provide an overview over the state of research and facilitate discussions on CA and its underlying frameworks.