Conference Proceedings

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Browsing Conference Proceedings by Author "Bastick, Tony"

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    Attributes of internality: An alternative path to teacher effectiveness
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) Cook, Loraine D.; Bastick, Tony
    The literature reports that individuals with an internal locus of control (LOC) are more effective in the workplace than externals, and that it is possible to increase individuals' LOC internality through training. Hence, the researchers have proposed "Teachers' Internality Training," a new alternative type of training, to increase the effectiveness of teachers. This paper describes qualitative and quantitative research with 220 Jamaican teachers that expanded the traditional LOC construct to expose the attributes of LOC that can be targeted by teachers' internality training. The paper also shows how this new expanded LOC construct suggests possible mechanisms for accomplishing this training. The significance of this paper is that it opens the possibility of a new type of alternative training for teaching effectiveness
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    Evaluations of quality teaching for university quality assurance
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) Bastick, Tony
    Analysis of degree results for The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, Jamaica, evidences exponential grade inflation since the introduction, publication, and administrative uses of Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) (Bastick, 2004). This paper explains how SETs contribute to grade inflation and why, despite their recognized disastrous effects on education, they continue to be used for quality assurance in English-speaking universities. An alternative method of assessing Quality Teaching is introduced that, by integrating teaching, learning, and assessment, can identify and offer detailed reports to advise at-risk students and suggest detailed modifications to teaching that optimize attainment. The method measures individuals' teaching/learning experiences. It uses a five-minute feedback form to assess the alignment of students' and lecturer's expectations. Results show that these in-course alignments predict enjoyment of teaching and students' academic attainment on course assessments. Hence, mismatched alignment and assessment results identify, for second marking, individual examination and coursework scripts that might have been wrongly marked. Analyses of alignments result in measures of quality teaching provided by lecturers, and experienced by groups of students, which can be rigorously compared between courses, subjects, and departments across the university for inclusion in quality assurance reports. The significance of this paper is that it presents an original, alternative, cost-effective assessment of quality teaching for tertiary institutions that can be demonstrated to improve education
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    Questioning our fundamental assumptions: Scientific measures of reliability
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) Bastick, Tony
    Have you every wondered why many phenomena that thousands of people believe in and claim to have experienced cannot be 'proven' by science; phenomena such as effects of the moon on human behaviour, and supernatural and paranormal events such as ESP, remote viewing, and out-of-body experiences. Typically, scientific results of well-designed experiments report correlations that show any such unusual human-contextual interactions are no better than chance, for example "Ivan Kelly, James Rotton and Roger Culver (1996) examined over 100 studies on lunar effects and concluded that the studies have failed to show a reliable and significant correlation (i.e., one not likely due to chance).... If so many studies have failed to prove a significant correlation between the full moon and anything, why do so many people believe in these lunar myths?" (Carroll, 2006). One simple reason that correlation studies show no significant results might not be because there is nothing there to measure but because the assumptions on which correlations are based attribute such unusual human-contextual interactions to randomness. Many users of correlation are unaware of these assumptions and many statisticians rarely question them. It might be said of these experiments that if we repeatedly do something the wrong way we will continue to reliably get the wrong answer. This paper explains very simply, for a non-statistical audience, the random-error assumption of classical test theory that is used to scientifically measure reliability of such phenomena. A study of 1,331 Grade 9 children in 43 Jamaican schools is presented to demonstrate that classic correlational measures of reliability do not recognize unusual but reliable human-contextual interactions recorded by these children. A simple alternative constructivist correlational measure is demonstrated, which is sensitive to such unusual but reliable human-contextual interactions. The significance of this paper is that it is fundamental to correlation studies in education, particularly in non-standard Caribbean populations
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    Teachers' professional growth: Examining the effect of teacher maturity on LOC orientation
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) Cook, Loraine D.; Bastick, Tony
    This research compared the professional growth of Jamaican teachers with those in the United States and Israel. The high correlation (r = 0.845) between age and length of service allowed for two studies to be replicated; one from the US showing increasing internality with increased length of service and the other from Israel showing increasing internality with age. In this research, a modified version of Rose and Medway's Teachers' Locus of Control (TLOC) instrument was used to compare the increases in maturity of self-direction and self-confidence of Jamaican teachers with that of teachers in the United States and Israel. A sample of 205 teachers in the Corporate Area, Kingston, Jamaica completed this study to replicate the findings relating years of service and age to teachers' locus of control orientation as measured using the TLOC scale. T-test and analysis of variance showed no significant difference between Jamaican teachers' length of service, age, and their locus of control orientation. These results imply that Jamaican teachers are not developing the same levels of self-direction and self-confidence as Israeli and US teachers who have similar years of teaching experience. It is suggested that in-service development programmes should address these particular shortfalls in professional growth of Jamaican teachers