Browsing by Author "Pierre, Phaedra N."

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    Differences between elementary and secondary school teachers in Trinidad and Tobago on teacher self-efficacy
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2003) Pierre, Phaedra N.; Worrell, Frank C.
    This study examined self-efficacy in 77 primary and secondary school teachers, most of whom were taking an educational psychology course at The University of the West Indies (UWI). Participants completed Gibson and Dembo's (1984) Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES), Bandura's (n.d.) Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES), and two single items developed by researchers at the Rand Corporation. Primary school teachers reported higher levels of self-efficacy than did secondary school teachers on all variables. TES and TSES subscale scores resulted in moderate to high internal consistency estimates, with the TSES scores having higher scores on average. TSES scores also had stronger intercorrelations than did TES scores or RAND items. Number of Years of Teaching (NYT) was not related to self-efficacy, but a single global self-rating of teaching ability had moderate correlations with some efficacy variables. It is suggested that future research should examine the factor structure of TSES scores and the potential of increasing the self-efficacy of secondary teachers through teacher training
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    In the context of Trinidad and Tobago, How do we identify schools that are succeeding or failing amidst exceptionally challenging circumstances?
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) De Lisle, Jerome; Smith, Peter; Lewis, Yvonne; Keller, Carol; Mc David, Patricia; Jules, Vena; Lochan, Samuel; Hackett, Raymond S.; Pierre, Phaedra N.; Seunarinesingh, Krishna
    The understanding that some schools face uniquely challenging circumstances represents a groundswell of new research in school improvement and education reform policy. Traditional school improvement theory does not account for variations in school contexts, and some have questioned the applicability of current practice to all schools, especially those in disadvantaged contexts. This leads directly to the core question of this paper: In the context of Trinidad and Tobago, how do we identify schools facing challenge? Answering this question will allow us to address the edifice of inequity strangling schooling outcomes in Latin America and the Caribbean. A critical task is the development of a database of schools with characteristics related to performance and context. This paper describes the protocol and initial data from such a project. Data came from the 2005 and 2006 primary school national achievement tests. A simple measure of school performance, called the Academic Performance Index, was developed, based on the distribution of students in each performance level defined in the national achievement tests. Additional indices were obtained, including disadvantage status and school size. From the database, a short list of high- and low-achieving schools in challenging circumstances was developed