Eğitsel Düşünce ve Uygulamalar (EDU) Ölçeğinin Geliştirilmesi: Geçerlik ve Güvenirlik Çalışması

Introduction To be able to manage their responsibilities and applications in a consistent manner throughout their educational lives, teachers should be consistent in their thoughts and beliefs towards educational processes. Therefore, the first step in forming consistent teachers is to allow teachers to know and express themselves. Educational philosophy is taught as a course at education faculties; however, some studies indicate that this course has a limited scope and content. This study, therefore, aims at promoting pre-service teachers to express their thoughts and applications about educational processes on a philosophical basis. By doing so, teachers or pre-service teachers can raise awareness about educational ideas and applications, create a consistent basis for their thoughts and applications, and understand other options that can be used in educational processes. Method The study group was comprised of 504 pre-service teachers who were enrolled at the Faculty of Education, Pamukkale University. To test construct validity of the inventory, exploratory factor analysis and correlation analysis were carried out with the help of SPSS 15.0. In the confirmatory analysis carried out with LISREL 8.30, the fit indices of the categories were analyzed for the inventory. Furthermore, to test reliability of the inventory, Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients (α) were computed with the total scores of the scale and the categories of this scale. The reliability of the inventory was also tested with the test-retest method. Results The construct validity of the Inventory of Educational Thought and Applications was tested via an exploratory analysis of the assessment of 504 pre-service teachers. Before deciding if the number of the participants was sufficient for the analysis, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett significance values were computed, and these values were computed as .967 and .000, respectively. During the first phase of exploratory factor analysis, no limit was determined for the categories. This analysis was carried out with the Varimax orthogonal rotation technique. As the result of this Varimax rotation on 42 items, the eigenvalues of two categories were found to be high. The breaking point graph also confirmed that the inventory had two categories. Forty-two items in the inventory were analyzed again with the limitation of two categories. During this second analysis, the two categories accounted for 61.533% of the total variance. The lowest difference between the factor loadings of the inventory was higher than .55. The items in the inventory distributed in line with the factors. These categories were titled “Traditional” and “Popular” by the researcher. In the confirmatory factor analysis, the LISREL 8.30 program reported that the χ² (chi-square) value was significant [(χ²=1665.08; p<0.01); (df=818); (χ²/df=2.03)] for the 42-item inventory, and other fit indices were found as follows: RMSEA=0.062, NFI=0.97, CFI=0.98, SRMR=0.048, GFI=0.85, AGFI=0.83. To test the reliability of the inventory, Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients (α) were computed with the total scores of the scale and the categories of this scale. The value was computed as α=0.94 (n=504) for the whole inventory, α= 0.98 (n=504) for the category of “Traditional” and α=0.95 (n=504) for the category of “Popular.” The reliability of the inventory was also tested with the test-retest method. According to the results of this analysis, the scores of the participants positively indicated good fit for the categories of the inventory based on the results of the same participants over two weeks. The correlation coefficients were found as r= 0.88 (n=60, p<0.01) for the category of “Traditional” and r=0.99 (n=60, p<0.01) for the category of “Popular.” Conclusion and Discussion This study aims to enable pre-service teachers to express their ideas about educational processes and the operational applications of these views. Based on analyses of a 42-item ETA inventory, it can be suggested that the inventory is valid and reliable in its examination of the thoughts and applications of educators in the two categories of “Traditional” and “Popular.” In the “Traditional” category, thoughts and applications are blended with realism, perennialism and essentialism. In the “Popular” category, thoughts and applications are formed by pragmatism, existentialism, constructivism, progressivism and re-constructionism. The development and administration of this kind of inventory related to the evaluation of educational thoughts and applications in philosophical terms is greatly needed. Regardless of which educational philosophy forms the basis of curriculum development, the educational philosophy of teachers is significant. If the philosophy of the curriculum is not consistent with that of the teachers, that curriculum and the regulations related to it cannot succeed. Using inventories and questionnaires like the one used for this study can reveal the philosophies of teachers, and curriculums can be revised accordingly. For curriculums to succeed, either curriculums must be tailored to existing philosophical thoughts or teachers must change their thoughts and applications in line with the curriculum. If these changes are not possible, teachers should be provided with the necessary awareness around this issue in order to meet the objectives of the curriculum.