Differences in School Leaders’ and Teachers’ Perceptions on School Emphasis on Academic Success: An Exploratory Comparative Study

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 11:40 am Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Using Perceptual Data and Existing Research to Improve How Educational Leaders Interact, Lead, and Manage (Table 7)

Abstract

This quantitative study examined how principals and teachers from all participating regions perceived school emphasis on academic success (SEAS) differently. Participants (N = 26,302) were principals and teachers who filled out the SEAS scale in PIRLS 2021. A second-order confirmatory factor analysis and a many-faceted Rasch analysis were used to investigate the psychometric properties of the SEAS, and whether there existed differences in school leaders’ and teachers’ perceptions of such construct within and across countries. Results from the factor analysis yielded a three-factor solution, and the SEAS scale demonstrated satisfying psychometric properties. Rasch analysis indicated excellent model-data fit, and item-level fit statistics, and there existed significant differences in the difficulty ordering of some items in SEAS across participant roles.

Authors

• Sijia Zhang, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Cheng Hua, University of Montevallo