The purposes of the study were: (1) to operationalize
Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching (Engineering,
Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturing and Social Reform), (2)
to predict conception of teaching scores, (3) to determine the
existence of dominant conceptions of teaching, and (4) to
determine the extent to which personal, socio—
cultural/educational and program variables predict dominant
conceptions of teaching.
A 75-item instrument, Conception of Teaching Scales (CTS)
was developed to operationalize Pratt’s five conceptions of
teaching. A pilot study revealed that the instrument had good
face, content, and convergent validities as well as acceptable
test-retest reliability and internal consistency.
A sample of 471 Vancouver School Board and New Westminster
School Board adult education instructors responded to a mailed
questionnaire survey conducted in the Fall of 1993. Responses to
the CTS were evaluated to determine whether Pratt’s five
conceptions were operationalized successfully. Factor analysis
was employed to determine whether the items in the CTS were
representative of Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching. Results
revealed that 63 out of 75 original items in the CTS successfully
operationalized five conceptions of teaching, with Pratt’s
Apprenticeship conception split into Apprenticeship-Practice and Apprenticeship-Modelling. Further refinement streamlined this
number to a six—scale 50—item Revised Conception of Teaching
Scales (CTS—R).
Personal, socio—cultural/educational and program variables
were used as predictors in multiple regressions to explain
variance in six conception scores. There was no single common
predictor of conceptions. On the average, the significant
predictors in the six regression equations accounted for 14.5% of
variance in the conception scores. The only prominent predictor
which accounted for most variance (2R = 17%) in the Nurturing
conception was personality—nurturance measure.
An instructor’s dominant conceptions were predicted by nine
independent variables, namely, gender, ethnicity, personality—
dominance, personality—nurturance, years of teaching adults,
content upgrade, living arrangement, level of education and class
size. These variables were collapsed into three significant
discriminant functions which correctly classified 34.7% of the
288 eligible cases into one of the six dominant conception
groups.
The study concluded that: (1) Pratt’s five conceptions of
teaching could be operationalized and that a Revised Conception
of Teaching Scales (CTS-R) was a valid and reliable instrument to
assess people’s conceptions of teaching, (2) conceptions of
teaching were independent concepts having their own existence,
(3) most instructors held at least one single most dominant
conception of teaching, and (4) dominant conceptions of teaching
were predicted by four personal variables (gender, ethnicity, personality—dominance and personality—nurturance), four socio—
cultural/educational variables (living arrangement, level of
education, years of teaching adults and content upgrade effort)
and one program variable (class size).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6991 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Chan, Choon Hian |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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