Page 116 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

Chapter 5
We were able to link the data from the questionnaires to the scores of both the assessment of pre-service teacher practice and the pre-service teacher inquiry project. We calculated the Pearson’s correlation between the scores of assessments of pre-service teachers’ practice and the scores of assessments of pre-service teachers’ inquiry. The correlation is significant when p < .001 and the 95% bias corrected accelerated (BCa) confidence interval (CI) does not include 0 (Field, 2018). To identify different profiles, using scores of pre-service teacher inquiry and scores of pre-service teacher practice, we conducted a two-step cluster analysis in SPSS, using the data of all pre-service teachers (N = 650). The statistical cluster quality is good when the ratio of sizes, largest cluster to smallest cluster, is below 2 (Anderberg, 2014). Because the indicator variables had different ranges, we standardised the scores.
After assigning the pre-service teachers to a cluster, we conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post hoc comparisons (Bonferroni) to investigate differences between the profiles on their perceptions of pre-service inquiry and the perceived most important learning outcome. We analysed all data anonymously.
4 Results
Perceptions regarding pre-service teacher inquiry
We measured student teachers’ perceptions of pre-service teacher inquiry with four scales (Table 5.1). We determined two scales that were linked to the perception of the value of pre-service teacher inquiry: the cognitive attitude (mean score: 4.5) and the affective attitude (mean score: 4.6). Both offer indications that students believe that pre-service teacher inquiry is valuable.
Table 5.1. Descriptive statistics of the four scales in the perception of pre-service teacher inquiry questionnaire (N = 236)
Scales (# items)
Cronbach’s Alpha
M
SD
Scale Value affective (6) Scale Value cognitive (4) Scale Self-efficacy (3) Scale Future (4)
.88 4.5 .76 .83 4.6 .85 .79 5.0 .70 .85 4.0 .98
Note: Results are based on items with six-point Likert scales (1 = ‘I fully disagree’,..., 6 = ‘I fully agree’).
The scale Self-efficacy indicates that pre-service teachers believe themselves able to
conduct practitioner inquiry after finishing teacher education. The mean of the Future 114