Page 114 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

Chapter 5
We added open questions, connected to the questions about self-efficacy: ‘What have you learnt about pre-service teacher inquiry in the teacher education programme?... The most important learning outcome for me with respect to undertaking practitioner inquiry was...’.
To confirm the suitability of the four scales of perceptions about pre-service teacher inquiry, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (IBM Amos, version 25). For model fit, we used chi-square fit statistics along with their associated robust comparative fit index (CFI; should be between .90 and .95 for model fit), PClose (for model fit: >.005), standardised root mean square residual (SRMR; close to zero for model fit) and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA; ideally <.05, but <.08 is acceptable). Because of the sample size, we used the normed chi-square (CMIN/DF), which indicates model fit if it is below 3.0 (Brown, 2006).
The initial model did not result in acceptable model fit (normed c2 = 2.36; CFI = .89; PClose = .006 and RMSEA = .08). We evaluated the items in the model on factor loading (which should be >.40) and content and inspected modification indices to estimate which modifications we could make to improve model fit. We ultimately removed seven added items that were not used in the original questionnaires and diverged from the constitutive scales (e.g., ‘I think undertaking inquiry is easy’). We also correlated two errors ( ‘I think pre-service teacher inquiry is nice’ and ‘... is motivating’). The fit of the adjusted model was acceptable: CMIN/DF = 2.01; CFI = .95; PClose = .02; SRMR = .055 and RMSEA = .07. The Cronbach’s alpha of the four scales indicated good internal consistency (Table 5.1).
Teaching quality
To determine the quality of the pre-service teacher inquiry and teaching quality, we took the assessment scores on the final internship of all just-graduated pre-service primary school teachers (N = 650). We measured teaching—or teacher—quality in the final internship with scores on assessments of seven teacher competences: (1) pedagogical competence (safe and stimulating learning environment), (2) interpersonal competence (communication and relation with learners), (3) pedagogical content knowledge competence (teaching skills), (4) organizational competence (leadership and classroom management), (5) competence to collaborate with colleagues, (6) competence to collaborate with external parties such as parents and (7) competence in own professional development. In the Netherlands, the grading runs from 1 (lowest score) to 10 (highest score), with 5.5 for constituting a passing assessment score. In this study, only successfully graduated pre-service teachers participated, so the scores we used are all between 5.5 and 10.
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