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ABSTRACT
Educational effectiveness research has provided evidence about the importance of teacher beliefs and attitudes for teaching and learning. This study builds on the concept of academic optimism, which combines 3 aspects of a teacher’s professional creed: self-efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis. The study explores the functioning of the collective and individual measures of academic optimism in the Czech environment and studies its impact on students’ outcomes. The analyses are based on pilot data from 39 schools, 325 teachers, and 1,316 Grade 9 students and on the data from the Czech Longitudinal Study in Education (CLoSE), covering 163 schools, 1,469 teachers, and 4,798 students. The individual measure was selected for further studies based on 2-level confirmatory factor analysis. Two-level structural equation modelling showed a significant impact of a school’s academic optimism on students’ achievement even after controlling for prior achievement and socioeconomic status at both the student and the school level.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Petr Soukup from the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University for help with SEM in MPLus.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. In the Czech education system, 9-year compulsory education is provided by basic schools, which have two stages: the first covering primary education – International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 1, consisting of Grades 1 to 5, and the second covering lower secondary education – ISCED 2, consisting of Grades 6 to 9. After the primary school, students can choose to apply for an 8-year academic track that is similar to English grammar schools and combines lower and upper secondary education. In the TIMSS and PIRLS 2011 cohort, approximately 12% of the students left basic schools for these grammar schools.
2. Mathematics tests for both Grades 6 and 9 were developed by test developers from the Institute for Research and the Development of Education of the Faculty of Education, Charles University. The tests included both closed and open-ended items that focused on three content areas: numbers and algebra, relationships and data, and geometry, and three cognitive domains: knowing, applying, and reasoning. The tests were administered externally by the agency responsible for the CLoSE data collection.
3. Variables at the individual level are marked with lowercase letters, variables at the school level with capital letters.
4. Tested in Models 1 and 2.
5. Tested in Models 2 and 3.
6. Averaged school variables are named “_m”.
7. The items were related to several latent constructs.
8. Latent variables at the school level are indicated by the extension “_SCH”.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Jana Straková
Jana Strakova works as an associate professor in the Institute for Research and Development of Education of the Faculty of Education, Charles University, in Prague. Her main research interests are assessment of students´ knowledge and skills, educational inequalities in primary and secondary education, and teacher beliefs.
Jaroslava Simonova works as a junior researcher in the Institute for Research and Development of Education of the Faculty of Education, Charles University, in Prague. Her main research interests are school choice, teacher beliefs, and qualitative methodology.
David Greger is the director of the Institute for Research and Development of Education at the Faculty of Education, Charles University, in Prague. His main research interests are educational inequalities, educational sorting, school effectiveness and teacher quality.