Scale Composition of University Teacher participation in Curricular Reform

Education Research Frontier March 2016, Volume 6, Issue 1, PP.41-47

Scale Composition of University Teacher participation in Curricular Reform∗ Yuanqi Song (College of Intercultural Studies, Southwest University, Chongqing China, 400715) Email: song200702@163.com

Abstract Based upon the analysis of literature at home and abroad and the interviews of teachers, the author compiled a scale of university teacher participation in curricular reform, which includes sense of participation, attitudes towards participation, environment of participation, actions of participation and effects of participation. By using the analysis of exploring factors of the preliminary scale, and the analyses of exploring factors and verifying factors of the pioneer questionnaire, the final scale is composed of the five structural factors with a total of 44 items. Analysis results show that the scale is of good reliability, good structure and data fitting, and it has good construct validity. Therefore, it can be used as an assessment tool of teacher participation in curriculum reforms in university.

Key Words: curricular reform; teacher participation; factor analysis; validity; reliability

1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND The success of education reform depends a lot on what teachers think and act (Fullan, 2010: 99), since curricular reform is the core of education reform, and the implementation of any curricular reform plan is carried out completely by the teachers. Curricular reform refers to the changes and modifications of the curricular as one defines, therefore, it can be of big or small scales. From the aspect of influences on teachers, Markee (1997:172) defined curricular reform as an organized process, and its success demonstrates itself in the innovation of the implementers’ use of teaching materials, skills and concepts. Accordingly, the main effects of curricular reform should be the transformations of teachers’ teaching concepts, development of teaching skills and methods. This is in line with teachers’ professional development (Voogt, 2011). Successful curricular reform can promote teachers’ professional development.

Curricular reform and its implementation are constrained by many factors (Richards, 2003: 94), but “teachers are in the center of any innovation which expects of improvement of teaching and learning (Ying, 2006)”. Teachers are one of the decisive factors of any successful curricular reform. Without teachers’ active participation, there would not have the success of curricular reform; thus, leading the implementers into the reform is very essential (Markee, 1997:172). University curricular reform in China develops very fast and has brought about some problems. One of the serious problems is the lack of teacher participation (Jiang, 2005). Research shows that reform can not succeed without teacher participation (Bee, 2008). Reform of College English Curricular, which provides learning experiences for the non-English majors, is one important aspect of university curricular reforms in China. College English and its reform exert great influence on millions of college students. Therefore, to study teacher participation and the effect of it plays a significant role in today’s reforms. And this study targets at college English teachers, which does not necessarily exclude other university teachers.

Scholars home and abroad define teacher participation from various aspects. Some thinks teacher participation refers to teachers’ joining into an organization, carrying out its activities, and providing advices for the activities (Dong, 2008). Some thinks that besides the right to decide their teaching materials, teacher participation is one kind of ∗

This study is the result of a program sponsored by South West University (SWU2013JY092).

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cooperation (Wang, 2000). Some thinks that teacher participation means that teachers participate into the process of decision-making, development, implement and assessment activities wholly, actively, critically and cooperatively (Zhou, 2002). Others think that teacher participation is the mechanism of selectively allotting powers to teachers (Merschen, 2014: 44). And the author defined teacher participation as teachers actively participate into a series of curricular reform affairs, including the process of decision-making, reform designing, material developing, implementing and assessment of curricular reforms at the school level.

Studying the definition and significance of teacher participation doesn’t guarantee a complete understanding of teachers’ experiences in curricular reform. Till now, there doesn’t have a proper scale that can be used to measure teacher participation in the reform. In order to study the experiences of teachers in curricular reform, we complied the scale of University Teacher Participation (UTP thereof), so as to provide a relatively objective, scientific and valid measuring tool.

2 COMPOSITION OF UTP Methods of interviewing, category analysis and literature analysis are applied to construct the structural factors of UTP in four steps. First, literature analysis and interviews were used to quest for the structure of UTP; then, semantic analysis and category analysis were applied to filtrate the words to build up the item pool; thirdly, an initial questionnaire was compiled, the preliminary test and analysis were carried out, and the pilot questionnaire was compiled; and finally, a pilot test was carried out, and a formal questionnaire was compiled after factor analysis of the data.

2.1 Structure of UTP After the literature analysis and interviews with experts, the author determines the 5 structures of UTP: sense of participation, attitudes towards participation, environment of participation, actions of participation and effects of participation.

Sense of participation (SP) refers to teachers’ curricular knowledge, sense of right, and sense of role in a curricular reform. Its key terms include sense of right, power, role and responsibility.

Attitudes towards participation (AtP) show teachers’ trust of reform and the willingness to make efforts in the reform.

A person’s attitudes are important to his work, but it is rather difficult to detect. It can only be inferred from some observable verbal and nonverbal clues of a person (Ajzen, 2005:2). Restricted by the study environment, this study focuses on the relatively easier aspect of verbal clues to measure teachers’ attitudes in cognition, affection and conation (Ajzen, 2005:16), including the preparation for the reform, trust of the reform and willingness of acting.

Environment of participation (EnP) is one important factor in teacher participation. Environment hinders or accelerates a person’s action towards a certain issue. This scale mainly focuses on the external conditions that the teachers can sense to be useful for their participation. Items of this structure center around culture, system, support, features of reform plan, leadership and so on.

Actions of participation (AcP) describe the specific actions of a person in their work. In a reform, whether the individual carries out the reform or not, they have various patterns of action (Gene, 2004: 99), which can be typical and inferred according to a certain criteria. This part of UTP is composed of the activities of preparation for the reform, implementation of the reform and improvement of the reform according to Gene’s Action Observation List (Gene, 2004: 290-297).

Effects of participation (EfP) are what would be brought about by implementing the reform. College English Curriculum Requirements prescribes the criteria of a successful reform: building up a multiple and rational curriculum system, changing the teaching model, improving students’ autonomous ability, forming a multi-learning system and building up a scientific assessment system (Education Bureau, 2007: 18-26). Items of this part center on teachers’ concepts, teaching methods, students’ learning results, etc.

The scale adopts the common Likert Scale. Items are composed of a statement, followed by 5 choices of completely - 42 www.erfrontier.org

disagree, disagree, not sure, agree and completely agree, which demonstrate the takers’ degree of acceptance of the meaning of the statement. Takers are asked to choose one choice after each statement according to their own experience, and the choices are scored respectively as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the higher of the score, the more participated of the taker into the reform.

An item pool was built up according to the structure and the key terms, and 65 items of the preliminary questionnaire were involved.

2.2 Test and Analysis of the Preliminary Questionnaire 1) Sample and Test The preliminary questionnaire was tested in 2014 among one university’s college English teachers and the teachers who participated in the CET-4 test evaluation in Chongqing. Altogether, 150 questionnaires were delivered out, and 113 valid questionnaires, about 75% were gotten back. Item analysis and factor analysis were employed by using the SPSS 21.0.

2) Item Analysis The purpose of item analysis is to find out and exclude those items which have a low correlation value and thus can not fulfill the purpose of the questionnaire. Item analysis shows that the internal reliability (Alpha) is 0.888, which indicates the scale is a relatively well complied one (Qin, 2009: 218, 220). The analysis also detected 13 items that can not reach up to the criteria of a good scale, they are 9,12,14,19,20,24,29, 30,33,41,45,48,49, which will be deleted in the following analysis. 18 items have lower than 0.3 correlation value among the 52-item scale, and the most parts have a correlation value higher than 0.3.

3) Exploratory Factor Analysis The methods of the principal component method and orthogonal rotation are applied to analyze the factors, and the results are: (1) KMO and Bartlett analysis: the value of chi-square is 3030.60, P=0; there are 5 marked turning points in Scree Plot, and these show that the data are suitable for factor analysis.

(2) Through the method of orthogonal rotation, we got the result of 5 items belonging to one factor, they all reflect the characteristics of the sense of participation. Therefore, this factor is named as Sense of Participation. These items are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6. Of the 5 items, the Eigen value is 2.067, factor load is 0.551~0.812, the contribution rate is 5.300%.

Items of 8, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25 belong to one factor, and they reflect characteristics of Attitudes towards Participation. Of these 7 items, the Eigen value is 2.776, factor load is 0.586~0.779, the contribution rate is 7.119%.

Another 6 items of 31, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39 gather around one factor, showing characteristics of actions of teachers, and it is named as Action of Participation. Of the 6 items, the Eigen value is 2.333, factor load is 0.523~0.789, the contribution rate is 5.981%. Items of 40, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52 gather around one factor, showing characteristics of Environments of Participation. Of the 9 items, the Eigen value is 3.919, factor load is 0.487~0.773, the contribution rate is 10.049%. The last group of 11 items gathers around one factor, showing the characteristics of effects, and it is named as Effects of Participation. These items are 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65. Of the 11 items, the Eigen value is 11.905, factor load is 0.581~0.800, the contribution rate is 30.526%.

(3) 8 items of 31, 43, 52, 42, 43, 54, 64 and 59 are deleted due to their low and dispersed factor load. The pilot questionnaire is composed of 38 items.

(4) Some items have a relatively higher factor load between two factors, which shows that there are problems with these items’ definition or expression, and needs further clarification.

After the preliminary test, 6 takers were interviewed. Their comments and advices, together with the analysis of the data, were taken into consideration, and the pilot questionnaire was complied.

Considering the limited number of the preliminary questionnaire takers and their lack of presentation, the pilot - 43 www.erfrontier.org

questionnaire includes more items than the above 38 ones. Some items were excluded during the statistical analysis, but they are regarded as necessary and important in the questionnaire; therefore, they were rewritten into the pilot questionnaire. They had been redefined and re-expressed. The pilot questionnaire is composed of 5 factors, each with 10 items. Five experts were invited to check the questionnaire, and some changes and modifications were made to it.

3 TESTING OF VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF UTP SCALE 3.1 Sampling Since the targeted people of the study is of great number, and the author’s studying time and ability are restricted, this study employed two sampling methods: “convenience sampling” of “non-probability sampling” and “cluster sampling” of “probability sampling” (Qin, 2009:142). The former was employed among teachers who took part in the professional development seminars sponsored by some famous publishers as Shanghai Foreign Language Press, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, Higher Education Press and so on during July and August of 2014.

These teachers gathered from all part of China, and they were chosen by their universities by random. About 700 questionnaires were delivered in this way, and 506 questionnaires were gotten back.

The latter method was employed in the second semester in 2014. 11 universities were chosen from the East, Central and West Districts, covering 5 key universities and 6 general universities. All of these universities have carried out the reform program. 30-50 questionnaires were sent to each university according to the teachers available there through mailing from September to October. About 460 questionnaires were delivered in this way, and 407 questionnaires were gotten back.

Altogether, about 1160 questionnaires were delivered, and 913 questionnaires, about 78.7%, were gotten back. All the data were recorded into files, checked, and employed the normal method of average value to replace the missing value (Qin, 2009:191). If there were about 15% of the items missing, the questionnaire would be regarded as invalid.

Through this way, there are altogether 844 valid questionnaires, about 72.8% of the total questionnaire delivered.

3.2 Reliability Test Reliability refers to the extent to those scores of the scale are free from errors of measurement. It includes items’ reliability and the scale’s reliability. Test of items’ reliability employed methods of the high and low score analysis and the analysis of odd and even numbers of items. The test of the scale reliability used the method of internal consistency (Alpha) analysis.

Analysis of high and low scores demonstrates that there are significant differences in average score, standard score and mean error between groups of 27% of high score and 27% of low score. In independent-sample T test, except items 6 and 19, the value of T of all the other items is high, and p=000, which shows that these items are of good reliability. For item 6, T=-1.898, p=0.058>0.05, and for item 19, t=-2.429, p=0.016. And item 6 should be deleted in the following analysis.

Analysis of the odd number and even number items shows that the two parts are of a relatively high comparability.

Alpha of the odd number items is 0.837, and that of the even number items is 0.810. Their correlation value is 0.855, Spearman-Brown value is 0.922, Gutt man Split-Half value is 0.922. Average score and the standard deviation of the odd number items are 3.612 and 0.962, and those of the even numbers are 3.538 and 1.030. All these figures are very close to each other.

The internal consistence (Alpha) of the scale is 0.913.

Analyses above show that the items of the scale can achieve the purpose of the design, and the scale is of high reliability (Qin, 2009: 218).

3.3 Validity Test Validity refers to the extent to which a scale can measure what it has meant to measure. It is tested by using the method of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.

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TABLE 1 FACTOR ANALYSIS OF THE INTERNAL STRUCTURAL CATEGORIES OF UTP (THE PRINCIPAL COMPONENT METHOD, ORTHOGONAL ROTATION, N=844)

Items (I) and factor (F) load

I 31 35 32 33 37 38 40 39 36 34

Factors Eigen Value Contribution Ratio % Accumulation of CR %

F1 .755 .741 .724 .722 .662 .625 .616 .609 .574 .567 EnP 5.274 11.987

I 44 47 45 43 42 50 41 49 46 48

11.987

F2 .722 .678 .673 .672 .657 .646 .637 .633 .629 .551 EfP 4.960 11.272 23.259

I 4 3 5 8 1 9 2 10 7

F3 .762 .750 .662 .651 .637 .629 .570 .546 .541

I 26 27 22 28 23 29 25 21

F4 .713 .711 .670 .656 .651 .611 .588 .448

I 16 13 15 17 20 12 14

F5 .738 .735 .734 .704 .455 .444 .428

SP 4.487 10.197

AcP 4.381 9.956

AtP 3.061 6.958

33.456

43.412

50.369

1) Exploratory Factor Analysis The methods of the principal component method and orthogonal rotation are applied to analyze the factors, and the results are: (1) KMO and Bartlett analysis: KMO=0.912, the value of chi-square =18951.726, P=0; there are 5 marked turning points in Scree Plot, and these show that the data are suitable for factor analysis.

(2) Through the method of orthogonal rotation to analyze factors, and the results are shown in table 1.

Data of Table 1 show that the model of 5 factors 44 items is rather good. The factor load values of each factor are high in the 5 categories, ranging from 0.567 to 0.755 in EnP, from 0.551 to 0.722 in EfP, from 0.541 to 0.762 in SP, from 0.448 to 0.713 in AcP and from 0.428 to 0.738 in AtP, and most of them are above 0.6. At the same time, the accumulation of contributions ratio of each category is 50.396%, which has reached the acceptable criteria of social science measurement (Wu, 2014: 233). These support that the theoretical factor structure is rational.

2) Retest of reliability After the exploratory factor analysis and the confirmation of the final factors and items, reliability of the scale and the five factors are retested as shown in table 2.

TABLE 2: RELIABILITY OF THE SCALE AND ITS FIVE FACTORS Factor SP AtP EnP AcP EfP scale

Cronbach’s Alpha .850 .744 .881 .844 .902 .912

Standard Cronbach’s Alpha .852 .745 .881 .849 .903 .917

Item number 9 7 10 8 10 44

As is shown in table 2, the reliability of the scale is rather good. Values of Alpha are high except the factor of AtP, whose reliability value is 0.744, which is still an acceptable one, and all the others are above 0.8, even above 0.9.

3.4 Confirmatory Test AMOS 21.0 is applied to the Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the internal structural components. Fitting degree refers to the degree of conformity of the structural part and the actual measurements. The five latent variables are the five factors gotten from the exploratory analysis, and the 44 observed variables are the 44 items of the scale. Parts of the residuals of the same factor are correlated according to the data in Model Fit Indices. The fitting degree of this - 45 www.erfrontier.org

study is shown in Table 3.

TABLE 3 FITTING DEGREE OF THE CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS OF UTP Model UTP Model

χ2

RMR

RASEA

NFI

IFI

CFI

χ2/ df

1965.091

0.0649

0. 040

0. 893

0. 936

0. 936

2.334

It is generally believed that if the value of χ2 /df is small, the fitting degree of the model is good. The fitting degree in this study is acceptably good. If the value of the fitting degree index of NFI, CFI, IFI is approaching 1, and RASEA is smaller than 0.08, the theoretic assumption of the study is better. The values of NFI, CFI, IFI are all above 0.90, and RASEA (=0.040) is lower than 0.08 in this study. These demonstrate that the fitting degree of the five factors is good, having a good structural validity.

Judging from the above, we can draw the conclusion that UTP is composed of 44 items with the five factors. With the way of fitting degree analysis, the indices of each are feasible, and this further proves that there is good consistence between the theoretical model and the empirical research.

4 CONCLUSION This study applies the methods of interviewing, category analysis and literature analysis to construct the scale and its items. After the exploratory factor analysis of the pilot questionnaire, it shows that the scale composed of 44 items can objectively reflect the real situation of university teacher participation in curricular reform. Confirmatory factor analysis strongly supports the theoretical model construction. It demonstrates the good structural validity of the model. Internal consistency test and item analysis show that the scale has a very good reliability, and it is a rather good measuring scale to study the participation of teachers in university curricular reform.

Although the scale is of good reliability and validity, it only proves the internal structure of UTP. As a measuring scale, it still needs perfecting. For example, the scale excludes the aspect of teachers’ professional ability from the beginning and it lacks a certain norm. Therefore, things like to further explore the composition of the scale of teachers’, to further complete the scale and to enlarge the research sample with the core aim of setting up a norm are some goals of future researches.

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AUTHOR Yuanqi Song (197102-today), got his BA

University, teaching English for the non-English majors. He had

and MA in Foreign Languages and Applied

been to study in Australia, American and the Great Britain. He is

Linguistics in Southwest University in

currently doing his Doctor Degree in Education, Curriculum and

China. He has been working in the College

Instruction in Faculty of Education, Southwest University.

of International Studies in Southwest

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