Abstract
Educational effectiveness research has shown a relationship between teacher beliefs and attitudes and student outcomes. This paper studies the extent to which the academic optimism of Czech teachers has proved to be meaningful in explaining student outcomes, and how different components of academic optimism relate to the cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes of Czech primary school students.
Academic optimism is studied with reference to the TIMSS 2011 data using multilevel modelling. The results show that Czech teachers demonstrate relatively low levels of academic optimism.
Multilevel modelling showed that in the Czech Republic, cognitive outcomes are related to teachers' career contentment, and non-cognitive outcomes are related to trust and self-efficacy. The operationalization of academic optimism in TIMSS is discussed, along with the implications of the findings that are presented for education policy.