Abstract
Student perceptions of teaching have often been used in tertiary education for evaluation purposes. However, there is a paucity of research on the validity, reliability, and applicability of instruments that cover a wide range of student perceptions of pedagogies and practices in high school settings for descriptive purposes. The study attempts to validate an inventory of pedagogy and practice (IPP) that provides researchers and practitioners with a psychometrically sound instrument that covers the most salient factors related to teaching. Using a sample of students (N = 1515) from 39 schools in Singapore, 14 factors about teaching in English lessons from the students’ perspective were tested with confirmatory factor analysis (classroom task goal, structure and clarity, curiosity and interest, positive class climate, feedback, questioning, quality homework, review of students’ work, conventional teaching, exam preparation, behaviour management, maximizing learning time, student-centred pedagogy, and subject domain teaching). Two external criterion factors were used to further test the IPP factor structure. The inventory will enable teachers to understand more about their teaching and researchers to examine how teaching may be related to learning outcomes.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP) under a Singapore Ministry of Education research grant. The authors thank Khin Maung Aye and Yee Zher Sheng for assistance with the data and Winnie Liu for constructive comments. The authors would also like to acknowledge the pioneer work of former scholars from CRPP, including S. Lau, Y. Nie, and D. Hogan, that has inspired the conceptualization of the constructs in this study.