Validation of curriculum leaders' attitudes toward research scale

Abstract

A Chinese version of the Attitudes Toward Research scale was originally developed by Hui and Li (2005) in measuring the attitudes which Hong Kong curriculum leaders have toward action research. Apart from identifying the dimension of perceived ability for doing research (AB), the scale was meticulous in distinguishing between the two senses of the significance of research: a communal sense of the significance of research as a means for professional development (CS) and a pedagogical sense of the significance of research as a means to provide solutions for teaching and learning deficiencies (PS). With the assumption that an understanding of these attitudes helps to assess the development of curriculum reform in Hong Kong, the present study therefore aims to validate the scale with the original 2003/04 cohort of 209 curriculum leaders and a new 2008/09 cohort of 126 curriculum leaders. Following multidimensional scaling, structured scale reduction procedures and structural equation modeling, a 10-item 3-factor curriculum leaders' attitudes toward research (CL-ATR) model was resulted. The work reported here contributes to gaining an understanding of how to nurture research attitudes for curriculum development and school improvement.Keywords: attitudes toward action research/ curriculum leadership /curriculum development and school improvement