Summary
The title of the current article is, “Investigation of the reliability and validity of the perception of teaching profession problems scale with a structural education model: a research on teacher” and it has been authored by Erol Kraca.
Purpose of the study
The purpose of the current study was to develop a reliable and valid likert scale that would prove useful in the determination of perceptions held by teachers in the various problems that they face in the teaching profession in Turkey.
Hypotheses
- The emergence of information technology has had an impact on educational institutions and as a result, it has also affected the teaching profession.
- The education system and teachers in Turkey are yet to adapt social change occasioned by information technology.
- The teaching profession in Turkey has been affected greatly by economic problems.
Participants
The participants of the current study were some 262 teachers that had been selected randomly form various cities in Turkey. For example, 160 teachers working in the city of Kutahya were selected. 38 teachers who participated in the study came from the city of Bursa, while 31 were selected from Burdur (Kraca, 2010).
From the city of Ankara, 25 teachers were selected, while 5 came from the city of Eskisehir. Finally, the other 3 participants came from the city of Balikesir.
Research Design
The current study was exploratory in nature. It was intended to examine the perception of teachers regarding the problems that they are normally faced with daily in the teaching profession in Turkey (Kraca, 2010).
This is the case because there is not much information that is available in literature regarding the issue at hand and for this reason the researcher may have deemed it necessary to undertake this research in order to further shed light on the issue.
In order to enable the researcher to collect the research data, use was made of a structured questionnaire. By administering the questionnaire to the participants of the study, the researcher would be in a position to obtain the much needed information to help him answer the research questions.
The study questionnaire consisted of two sections. The first part consisted of questions about the personal information (demographics) of the participant (Kraca, 2010).
The second part of the questionnaire attempted to gain information regarding the perception of the respondents in as far as their perceptions on problems faced by teacher are concerned.
Questions in the second part of the questionnaire were structured in the form of a five-point likert scale in order to enable the researcher assess the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of the respondents regarding the problems that they faced in the teaching profession.
Data Analysis
In order to analyze data, the researcher utilized LISREL and the statistical package SPSS (Kraca, 2010).
Research Findings and Conclusion
The development of the scale for the current study was accomplished in three stages. First, the researcher explored literature on teaching as a profession, along with the problems associated with this profession. The second stage involved a review of the instruments that would be used to measure the problem at hand.
The final phase involved asking some 112 graduands of Dumlupinar university who were expected to graduate as teachers in the 2009/2010 academic year to write a composition in which they would reflect their thoughts, emotions as well as the problems that they felt posed a challenge to the teaching profession.
According to the research findings, the scale used was both reliable and valid, based on the data collected from the respondents (Kraca, 2010).
However, upon repeating the validity and reliability studies, coupled with further analysis, the researcher realized that having the same characteristics in a form that had the different teachers from various sections of study would have gone a long way into helping to assess the structural validity.
Critical Analysis
The objective of the study has been stated clearly. However, the study’s hypotheses are not as direct, and one has to read through the paper carefully before noticing them. In addition, the author appears to combine future tense and present tense, which should not be the case with a study that has already been completed.
For example, in the abstract, the researcher has noted, “The questionnaire consists of two sections” (Kraca, 2010). Some of the sentences used in the study are somewhat vague, and this is indicative of lack of proper preparation in writing the paper. In addition, some of the words in the paper have also been misspelled, showing that the writer did not pay much attention to proofreading the final paper.
We are also not told the rationale behind settling for the 262 respondents of the study, and why the number of teachers in the participating cities was distributed in the form provided by the study. The validity of the question is also in doubt because there is no mention of it having been pre-tested.
Nonetheless, the demographic information of the participants has been presented and analyzed well. In addition, certain vital sections of the study are missing.
For example, considering the nature of the study, there should be a section on ethical considerations, but this has not been captured. The researcher has only mentioned that participants took part in the study out of their own volition. There should be mention of the study’s limitations and delimitations as well.
Reference List
Kraca, E. (2010). Investigation of the reliability and validity of the perception of teaching profession problems scale with a structural education model: a research on teachers. Education, 132(2), 262-272.