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Curriculum Perceptions: a multivariate analysis |
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| Authors: | D Buss D Rosenberg D Tosh |
| Institution: | Rider College , School of Education , Lawrenceville, NJ 08648‐3099, USA |
| Abstract: | The curriculum decision‐making perceptions of a pilot sample of 75 American kindergarten through twelfth grade teachers doing graduate work in education were surveyed with a 42 item questionnaire. The first four questions established the demographics of the respondents and the next three items indicated that Americans feel more constrained in making curriculum decisions than their British counterparts. The cross‐cultural comparisons are based on the findings of Doherty & Travers (1984). The final 35 items, adapted from the instrument developed by Doherty & Travers, were subject to a factor analysis. Five interpretable factors were extracted. The factors were labelled (1) External Monitory, (2) External Professional, (3) Internal Professional, (4) Facilitative‐Constraining, and (5) Internal Professional Peers. These factors represented 32 items with three items unassignable to any factors. Interitem reliability of the factors was judged good. Though the British study also extracted five factors (from a 30 item pool), dissimilarities in labelling and ranking importance occurred. Some of the key differences were traced to the structure of the American educational setting. |
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