The purpose of this study was to assess the relative contribution of teacher and tutor ratings of inattentive behavior in two different instructional settings in predicting students’ performance on fraction concepts and whole-number calculations. Classroom teachers rated each student’s attentive behavior in a whole-class setting and tutors rated each student’s attentive behavior in an intensive small-group setting. The sample was 131 fourth-grade students identified as at risk for developing mathematics difficulties (MD) and randomly assigned to fraction tutoring. Teachers and tutors rated each student’s inattentive behavior in the 10th week of the 12-week intervention period. On average, tutors rated students as more attentive than teachers. Also, tutor ratings had greater predictive power than teacher ratings on fraction concepts, but neither set of ratings uniquely predicted performance on whole-number calculations. Possible explanations for findings and directions for future research are discussed.
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