Development of Parents’ School Belief Scale

Author(s):

Ozlem Fatma Yildirim(presenting / submitting)Yesim Capa Aydin

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 14 A, Investigating Factors Underlying School Choice and Educational Transition

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-11

15:30-17:00

Room:

326. [Main]

Chair:

Plamen Mirazchiyski

Contribution

Use of beliefs as a determinant of certain behaviors is common in the literature. To illustrate, in his master thesis, Goh (2007) aimed to determine parents’ school choice behaviors through using the following theoretical frameworks: Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behavior. In this context, literature is rich in free school choice policies and its effects. Particularly, studies on parental school choice are mostly about how their reasons differ by family background characteristics, especially for ethnicity, what motivates parents to be involved in their children's education, and what choice and involvement factors influence school knowledge and satisfaction (Bauch, 1992; Bossetti, 2004; Weiher&Tedin, 2002). All of them are descriptive in nature. Similarly, when the studies in Turkey are examined, they mainly focus on perceptions of parents about school related topics (Ocak&Yamaç, 2011), predicting primary school students’ national level assessment test scores from parental involvement and attitudes towards school (İpek, 2011), parents’ perceptions in relation with school image (Bakioğlu&Bahçeci, 2010), and factors affecting parents’ private school choice (Hesapçıoğlu&Nohutçu, 1999). However, any study measuring parents’ beliefs that affect their school choice was found in the literature including studies in Turkey. Moreover, in both global and local studies, participants were mostly given a list of factors and expected to rank them according to order of importance (e.g. Bauch, 1992). These provide concrete reasons for preferring a specific school; however, beliefs behind those reasons that make them important for an individual are not studied. Therefore, the current study is significant in that it aims to develop a scale that measures parental beliefs on school choice.

School choice is a decision-making process parents go through and their decisions were affected by their perceptions of schools. In addition, parents’ engagement in their children’s learning at home and school offers an important pathway to improved academic and social outcomes for many students. Moreover, in the literature on beliefs, it is claimed that beliefs play a crucial role on people’s behaviors (Brown & Cooney, 1982; Eisenhart, Shrum, Harding, & Cuthbert, 1988). Therefore, within the context of present study, it was aimed to develop a scale about parents’ beliefs on school choice.

Method

Participants:121 parents participated in the present study. Among them 80 (66.1%) were women, 40 (33.1%) were men. Their ages were ranging between 24 and 60. Sixteenof the parents (13.2%) had primary school degree, 20 (16.5%) elementary, 55 (45.5%) high school, 21 (17.4%) university, and 6 (5%) master/doctorate degree. Parents’ monthly income was also asked and their responses had a large variation (M = 2948.57, SD = 3134.99) between 700TL and 29,000TL. Procedure:This is a scale development and validation study. A scale with three parts was developed by the researcher in order to measure parents’ beliefs on schools. Considering related literature, the first part of the scale was developed and parents were asked to evaluate 20 statements about factors affecting their school choice from 1 to 5 which “1” refers to “not really important” and “5” to “very important”. The second part includes 18 belief items about features of a school. Participants were asked to evaluate each statement to what extend they agree or disagree on a 6-point scale. In the generation process of these items, literature on belief scales from various disciplines and educational philosophies were reviewed. A general framework for potential expectations of parents with different school beliefs was constructed. Four experts were consulted to give feedback on the content and face validity of the scale. Following, a parent was interviewed for the sake of clarity of the items. Given the last format of the items, two research assistants who have experience in test development were asked to match the items with given two factors which are expected to cluster after the analyses of the scale. Here are some sample items of the belief scale: “At the school which I send/want to send my child/ren, …teacher is the only one who is responsible for students’ learning. …each students’ individual needs are considered. …the only task of the teacher is increasing student achievement in the exams.” Finally, the last part was about participants’ demographic information: gender, age, education level, monthly income, whether they own a house or pay rent, number of children, number of children going to school, and children’s school level. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted using SPSS22.0. Cronbach alphas were generated for each sub-scale as well.

Expected Outcomes

Common factor analyses considers only the common or shared variance and leaves out the specific and error variance because of that in this study it was preferred to use Common Factor Analyses instead of Principle Component Analysis (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 2014). When the correlation matrix was examined, it was seen that items were inter-correlated. Items appeared to cluster under three meaningful parts. To test for the presence of correlations among the variables, the Bartlett Test of Sphericitywas also conducted. It yielded a significant value. The adequacy of sample size was checked through Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value and it was greater than .60 (KMO = .68). Thesample size to item number ratio (N/p = 121/18) was greater than five (Hair et al. 2014), deemed adequate to run factor analysis. Factor analysis revealed three factors, namely, student oriented beliefs, existentialist beliefs, and academic oriented beliefs. Factor loadings were ranging between .41 and .79. Mean scores of the items showed that mean scores of the items range between 5.45 and 2.48. Item 3 “Discipline is the main aspect of the school that I send/want to sen my child/ren” represents the highest mean (SD = 1.00) which means that parents almost totally agreed with this item. On the other hand, item 12 “Education is only provided through school-based activities at the school that I send/want to sen my child/ren” the lowest mean (SD = 1.50) indicating that parents somehow did not agree with this item. Additionally, reliability values were .81, .72, and .73, respectively. Lastly, whether there exists a significant gender difference between their beliefs will be analyzed.

References

References Bakioğlu, A. & Bahçeci, M. (2010). Review of parents’ perceptions in relation with school image. Atatürk Education Faculty Educational Science Journal, 31, 25-55. Bauch, P. A. (1992, April). Toward an ecologicalperspective on schoolchoice. Paperpresented at theannualmeeting of theAmericanEducationalResearchAssociation, San Francisco. Bossetti, L. (2004). Determinants of school choice: Understanding how parents choose elementary schoolsin Alberta. Journal of Education Policy, 19, 387-405. Brown, C. A. & Cooney, T. J. (1982). Research on teacher education: A philosophical orientation. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 15(4), 13-18. Eisenhart, M.A., Shrum, J.L., Harding, J.R., & Cuthbert, A.M. (1988). Teacher beliefs: Definitions, findings, and directions. Educational Policy, 2 (1), 51-70. Field, A. (2009). Discovering statistics: Using SPSS for windows (3rd ed.). London – Thousand Oaks – New Delhi: Sage Publications. Goh, E. (2007). Primary school choice selection: examining parental school choice decision behavior using theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behavior. (Master thesis.) University of Wollongog, Australia. Hair, J., Anderson, R.E., Tatham, R.L., & Black, W.C (2014).Multivariate data analysis (7th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc. Hesapçıoğlu, M. & Nohutçu, A. (1999). Factors affecting parents’ private school choice and private schools’ advertisement strategies.Atatürk Education Faculty Educational Science Journal, 11, 183-202. İpek, C. (2011). Predicting primary school students’ national levelassessment test scores from parental involvement and attitudes towards school. Electronic Journal of Social Sciences, 10(38), 114-135. Ocak, G. & Yamaç, A. (2011). The examination of teachers’ and caregivers’ attitudes towards resigtration areas application.Dumlupınar University of Social Science Journal, 31, 357-374. Tabachnick, B.G. & Fidell, L.S. (2007). Using multivariate statistics. Boston: Pearson Education Inc. Weiher, G. R., & Tedin, K. L. (2002). Does choice lead to racially distinctive schools? Charter schools and household preferences.Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 21(1), 79–92.

Author Information

Ozlem Fatma Yildirim (presenting / submitting)

Middle East Technical University

Educational Sciences

Ankara

Yesim Capa Aydin

Middle East Technical University, Turkey

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