Classroom Psychosocial Environment
Copyright © 2001
NISMED.
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The
Development and Validation of a Classroom Environment Scale for
Filipinos
|
Thelma
C. Rivera |
Mildred
F. Ganaden |
AbstractIntroductionDescription
of the LESConstruction
of the LES
Field
Testing of the LESReliability
of the LESThe
Factor Analysis
SummaryReferencesAppendices
Validation
of the LES
The initial set of LES was presented to experts and peers, and revised
on the basis of the comments and suggestions. The revision of the scales
resulted in the reduction of the initial set of the items of the LES
from 178 to 133. The original response mode was retained for the LES.
Prepiloting of the revised set of LES was done on March 26, 28 and 29,
1996, using three sections of high school chemistry classes, each with a
different teacher, at the laboratory school of a state university. The
instructions were read aloud while the students read along silently.
This was a big help, in view of the poor English skills of most
students. The use of the blackboard was also of help in illustrating the
examples and in writing the Tagalog translations of some English words
that were not easily understood by high school students. A total of 92
students completed the LES.
Transparencies of the questionnaires with scores for each item written
on each blank were superimposed on the completed forms to facilitate
scoring. The results were encoded and analyzed statistically using the
SPSS/PC + software.
The t tests of difference between means of the upper and lower 27% (to determine the item's ability to distinguish between the "high raters" and the "low raters") and the interitem correlations were used to verify the appropriateness of the items in the questionnaires. Items which discriminated between the high and low raters, and with correlation coefficients of 0.5 or higher with the total score (significant at the 0.01 level) were retained. Ninety-one (91) of the 133 items were retained in the LES. A few items were rephrased to comply with the recommended 50-50 distribution of positive and negative statements.
Many of the respondents answered "NA" (Not Applicable) even when it was possible to make a judgement on the item. For example, many students answered "NA" to the item "The students would be proud to show the classroom to a visitor" because they said there was no visitor. The option "NA" therefore was deleted.
Pilot testing of the second revised (prepiloted) set of LES was done on June 25 to 28, July 1 and 2, 1996, using 645 students from randomly selected 17 out of 30 sections of the incoming fourth year physics students who had passed chemistry in the preceding year at a large public high school in Quezon City. These 17 sections were under six teachers.
The responses were again promptly encoded and analyzed statistically using the SPSS/PC + software for final analysis.
The items in the les were found to have very good discriminating power (significant at the 0.1 level) and showed greatly improved interitem and item-to-total-score correlations (significant at the 0.01 level). Based on these results, 76 of the 91 items in the LES were retained.
The final version of the LES which contains a total of 76 statements
(i.e., 2 to 11 per scale) was found to have a reliability of 0.92, using
Cronbach's alpha coefficient. This indicates that the instrument is
highly reliable.
Appendix C lists the name of each scale of the Filipino LES, its description and a sample item.
The change in the total number of items and response mode from the first draft to the final form for each of the three instruments are summarized in Table 1.
|
Table
1 |
||||
|
Instrument |
Number
of Items and Response Scale |
|||
|
Draft |
Prepilot |
Pilot |
Final |
|
|
Learning
Environment Scale (LES) |
17 |
133 |
91 |
76 |
|
Almost
Never |
True |
True
|
True
|
|
|
Seldom
|
True
Sometimes |
True
Sometimes |
True
Sometimes |
|
|
Sometimes |
Not
True |
Not
True |
Not
True |
|
|
Often |
Not
Applicable |
|
|
|
|
Very
Often |
|
|
|
|
AbstractIntroductionDescription
of the LESConstruction
of the LES
Field
Testing of the LESReliability
of the LESThe
Factor Analysis
SummaryReferencesAppendices