Researchers in teacher education have suggested that many of teachers classroom decision-making and actions are based on some sort of theoretical framework which are beliefs driven (Armour-Thomas, 1989; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Marland, 1995, 1998). Such beliefs driven theoretical framework constitute teacher's conceptions about teaching and learning and build up their principles of classroom practice. These beliefs or theoretical frameworks are given various labels in literature including implicit theories or personal theories about teaching and learning. Studies of teacher's personal theories are often conducted by means of qualitative methods such as interview, narratives and analysis of reflective journal about teaching. Quantitative measure by means of questionnaire or inventory to study personal theories are few but they are useful to provide a global picture or profiles of teachers beliefs/conceptions about teaching and learning. This paper attempts to develop and validate an instrument to measure teacher's personal theories. By means of which teacher educators and teacher education students can have an understanding of student teachers beliefs and conceptions about teaching and learning, which is considered a functional way of helping them learn how to teach in their course of professional development. Thus the validated measure assists teacher educators to evaluate the effectiveness of the teacher education program with reference to the identified profile of personal theories of their students. Also, the relations of demographic variables of teacher education students and their personal theories were analysed to investigate if there is any influence of age, gender and electives studied on the students beliefs or personal theories about teaching/learning, based on which implications and suggestions are drawn for teaching education development and research.
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A questionnaire survey was conducted with 106 in-service teacher education students of a university in Hong Kong to study their motives and commitment in teaching. Three motive factors were identified in their choice of teaching as a career, the most influential one is "intrinsic/altruistic motive", the next one is "extrinsic motive/job condition" and lastly "influence from others". Within the intrinsic/altruistic motive, around 80% to 95% teachers considered teaching is meaningful, they desired to teach the subjects they liked, they wished to help others and to work with children/teenagers. Four factors representing the areas or aspects of teaching which influenced the teachers' dedication and commitment were found, viz., "students' learning and school development", "demands on teaching and school practices", "teaching as a career choice", "teacher-pupils interaction and attitudes". Correlational analyses showed that intrinsic/altruistic motive was significantly related to the four commitment factors, suggesting that the motives held by the teachers in joining the teaching profession (in particular, intrinsic/altruistic motive) is influential upon teachers' commitment in teaching. Further analysis of the item responses highlights the elements affecting teachers' commitment in teaching involve school head, colleagues, students, parents and educational changes, which deserve the attention of the education authority to address with appropriate measures.
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Although all teachers hold beliefs about alternative curriculum designs, researchers know little about how the beliefs are related to each other and to teacher demographic characteristics such as gender and subject areas. In addition, measuring instruments in this area of curriculum enquiry remain primitive. In this article, we review issues surrounding the measurement of teachers' curriculum orientations, report the development and validation of a 30-item curriculum orientation inventory,and use the data gathered from a sample of 648 Hong Kong teachers to examine the relationships between curriculum orientations and some teacher demographic characteristics. The inventory was designed to measure teachers' five curriculum orientations: academic, cognitive process, social reconstruction, humanistic and technological. We found that the reliability and validity of the data were adequate. In contrast to logical expectation, teachers valued all the five theoretically conflicting curriculum orientations and the correlations among the orientations were considerable and positive. There was no significant difference in teachers' curriculum orientations based on gender. Primary and secondary school teachers also did not show significant difference. Furthermore, experienced teachers were more likely to value the academic orientation and English language teachers were more humanistic than science teachers. Directions for future research are suggested.
[Copyright of Curriculum Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585170210136868]