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Abstract
The Learner Profile (LP) frames International Baccalaureate (IB) learning outcomes across the three programme levels and, as such, plays a key role in measuring the success of the rapidly growing number of IB schools in the Asia-Pacific Region. Our aim was to develop an instrument to measure the IBLP and validate the instrument through a series of psychometric procedures. Results showed solid construct validity and measurement reliability, alongside content validity from our Delphi studies and cross-validation with different samples. Given the growing number of IB schools in the Asia-Pacific, we believe that the development of the IBLP questionnaire (IBLPQ) contributes to the international research community and educators interested in exploring the relationship between student outcomes and the LP. Importantly, given the current absence of systematically designed and tested survey instruments to measure the LP, we expect the IBLPQ will become a key initial resource for a wide range of stakeholders.
Acknowledgement
An earlier draft of this paper was prepared and presented at the IB Asia Pacific Annual Conference, Singapore, 2014. We appreciate the financial support provided by the IB for this research project. We thank Bradley Shrimpton at the IB Office in Singapore for his research support. We also thank Yuyang Cai at the University of Hong Kong for his assistance with content validity analysis and Hoi Ling Tam at the Hong Kong Institute of Education for her assistance with data collection. Special thanks to the IBDP students and IB educators who participated in the survey and various Delphi studies. Finally, we are thankful for the anonymous reviewers’ helpful comments on the earlier draft.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Unlike the IB’s definition, one may argue that natural curiosity can be ‘fostered’ or ‘encouraged’ but not ‘developed’.
2. See also Wright and Lee (Citation2014a) about tensions embedded in the school practices of the LP.
3. In the context of IB teaching and learning, open-mindedness refers to the capacity for demonstrating what the IB terms ‘international-mindedness’ (IB, Citation2013c, p. 1). This reflects the IB’s underpinning philosophy of intercultural understanding, multiculturalism, and global citizenship and engagement (cf. Singh & Qi, Citation2013). We note that open-mindedness can be understood as a much broader construct in other educational or curricular contexts. Despite this, we used the IB’s conceptualisation of open-mindedness in order to contextualise our study for IB schools.
4. For example, through the Delphi study, we revised the original item ‘Apply existing ideas and concepts that have local and global significance to different socio-cultural contexts’ into ‘Apply ideas and concepts to understand how things work in new situations’ in the domain of Knowledgeable.
5. Content validity (also known as item content relevance) refers to ‘the degree to which elements of an assessment instrument are relevant to and representative of the targeted construct for a particular assessment purpose’ (Haynes, Richard, & Kubany, Citation1995, p. 238).
6. We note that there are a number of content validity indices such as Lawshe’s (Citation1975) CVR, Rovinelli and Hambleton’s index of item-objective congruence (Citation1977), Aiken’s V content validity coefficient (Citation1985) and Penfield’s score interval (Citation2003). Given that each of these indices has its own strengths and limitations, we used one classic index and two of the most contemporary indices to ensure content validity (i.e. Lawshe’s CVR, Aiken’s coefficient and Penfield’s interval scores).
7. We note that we added one item to the domain of Knowledgeable to produce a balanced number of items for each LP attribute. The added item underwent a similar procedure of checking content validity.
8. For both of the pilot and the main studies, we sought consents from students/parents (by online) and schools (by invitation letter). After each participating school’s approval, we approached individual students to seek consents. We clearly highlighted the voluntary nature of participation with an emphasis on protecting privacy and anonymity.
9. It is possible that there could be some social desirability bias in our sample students’ self-report about their capacity of the IBLP attributes. If it is the case, as in other self-report-based surveys, this is a limitation of our study. Despite this, we have less concern about the potential issue of social desirability bias in our study. There are several reasons for this. First, we identified quite a substantial variation in our sample students’ responses to their IBLP attributes across different schools and countries. This suggests that even though the survey was based on self-ratings (which might have provoked some social desirability bias), students’ responses to our survey seem to be reliable because if at all they were motivated or pressured with social desirability bias, we do not think that we have such a substantial variation. Second, methodology research papers have demonstrated that even more sensitive private information through self-report (e.g. GPA, romantic relationships of high school students, etc.) is reasonably reliable (e.g. Cassady, Citation2001, Add-Health research papers) if the procedure of data collection ensures privacy and anonymity. We wish to highlight that we ensured the voluntary nature of survey participation and the survey was done individually and independently through online. Therefore, we assume that there was little pressure that forces students to respond in a socially desirable way.
10. Here, partial-continuum schools refer to IB schools that do not implement the three IB programmes (the PYP, the MYP and the DP) simultaneously.
11. By design, the online survey used for this study did not allow students to skip questions.
12. Additionally, given the consistently positive correlations among the four constructs (see also Appendix 4), it can be also said that our LP instrument has nomological validity.
13. Again, by design, the online survey used for this study did not allow students to skip questions.