Testing content validity of teacher-made test: Profiling teacher perceptions and demographic variables

The content validity of teacher-made tests (TMT) in Malaysian Chinese primary schools was explored in this research. The study used teacher-made tests to analyze the selected Chinese primary schools, which have yet to be thoroughly explored in the context of these school types. It also investigated how well teachers in the sampled schools understand the table of specifications (TOS). The study further examined the extent to which included demographic variables affect the validity of teacher-made tests. A total of 660 questionnaires were distributed randomly to teachers from 21 Chinese primary schools. There were 381 completed questionnaires (58% of total rate) received and analyzed. The findings demonstrated that most teachers have a basic understanding of the TOS and that teacher-made test levels are valid. K-group MANOVA analysis also revealed that work experience and age had a significant influence on teacher understanding. Work experience and age, on the other hand, had no effect on the teacher-made test. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that both teacher understanding and teacher-made tests were unaffected by teacher gender

Effectiveness of Adlerian Group Guidance Self- Enhancement Module on emotional intelligence of students

The purpose of this study is to assess the validity and reliability of group guidance module termed Adlerian Group Guidance Self-Enhancement Module (AGG-SE) developed by the researcher based on Sidek Module Development Model (SMDM), and to determine its effect on undergraduate students’ emotional intelligence. The module was examined base on the feedback requested by the researcher from five experts in module development, emotional intelligence, and Adlerian theory, followed by a pilot study conducted to assess the reliability of the module. This study further employed experimental design with randomized pre-test post-test control group design to examine the effectiveness of AGG-SE on students’ ability to perceive, understand, facilitate, and manage emotions in self and others. Respondents were 68 undergraduate male students, who were beneficiaries of Asian Competencies Scholarship Programme (ACSP), targeting the following Southeast Asian countries: Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Laos, and Cambodia. The participants age was 18-21 (n: 32), 22-25 (n: 27) and 22-25 (n: 9), all of them were fulltime students at International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) and International Islamic College (IIC). Randomized pre-test-post-test experimental design was used, thus, respondents were randomly assigned to experiment [n: 34] and control [n: 34] groups, after administering the 33-Item Schutte Self Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT) in the pre-test and ensuring equality of variance between the groups. Prior to that, results of the pilot study using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on SSEIT revealed that Emotional Intelligence latent construct is a four-factor indexed (χ2/df = 2.127, CFI =.962, TLI =.926, NFI =.969 and RMSEA =.080) indicating a good fit to the model. The results of the reliability and validity of the AGG-SE also revealed an overall validity index of.81, and the Cronbach alpha obtained for the reliability was .605 for 43 items. These results indicated the relevance and fitness of AGG-SE module in addressing students’ emotional intelligence base on the four-factor model revealed by the CFA results. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to analyse the association between the dependent variables EI sub-dimensions (i.e., perceiving emotion, understanding emotion, managing emotion and facilitating emotion), and the independent variables: 1. the study groups and 2. evaluation of pre-test and post-test, whereas t-test was used to test the effect of study groups, on the EI total. The results of an independent samples t-test demonstrate that after participating in the 12 sessions of AGG-SE, respondents from the experiment group exhibited significant improvement in their emotional intelligence (M = 4.86, SD = .12) compare to their counterpart in the control group (M= 3.83, SD = .35), indicating the effectiveness of the intervention programme AGG-SE, t(37.46) = 15.32, ˂.001. Moreover, the effect of AGG-SE on the ability to perceive, understand, facilitate, and manage emotions varies from high to low scores among the respondents, but EI-Total shows a significant improvement between pre-test and post-test. Nonetheless, comparisons within treatment group across the dependant variables showed that, the respondents highest score was in the ability to perceive emotion (PE) dimension of EI [F (1.59) = 203.288, p ˂.05, partial η2 =.775)], followed by the ability to manage emotion (ME) [F (1.59) = 184.940, p ˂.05, partial η2 =.758] and the ability to understand emotion (UE) [F (1.59) = 145.590, p ˂.05, partial η2 =.712] respectively; although a significant improvement was also observed in the ability to facilitate emotion (FE) dimension of EI [F (1.59) = 116.753, p ˂.05, partial η2 =.664], given the fact that the pvalue reported was ˂ 0.05, the respondents score was lower in the FE dimension compare to the other dimensions of EI. This study confirmed that, AGG-SE was effective in guiding the Asian Competencies Scholarship Program students who were enrolled in various undergraduate programmes in IIUM and IIC to improve their emotional intelligence. It is recommended that school counselling services should not only incorporate emotional competencies in the general school and university counselling framework, but endeavour in developing validated modules to aid counsellors in conducting guidance and counselling programs especially on improving students’ emotional intelligence. Similarly, educational policy makers are encouraged to take proactive roles in ensuring that, students acquire the requisite emotional competencies before joining the workplace. And finally, since the current study was conducted in an academic setting, further studies are needed in the organizational setting, targeting staffs and employees, and perhaps an extended module to test the difference between short time and comprehensive long-time intervention modules

Managing the quality of undergraduate students: Evidence from Ghanaian higher learning institutions

This study investigates the extent to which selected Ghanaian higher learning institutions (HLIs) respond to demands for quality improvement in the sector. It equally tests the psychometric properties of the survey instrument across different cultural settings. Given the consideration of the confidence of interval guidelines of 99% and the margin of error at ± 5%, 660 undergraduate students and academic staff were sampled. Since this study uses an Internet-based survey through a list-based sampling frame, convenient sampling was employed using the University Experience Survey (UES) scale to collect the data from the respondents of four public HLIs. The findings provide cross-cultural evidence on the validity of the UES scale given the fit indices of the measurement model, values of the average variance extracted (AVE), and composite reliability index (CRI). The findings also reveal that while undergraduate students are satisfied with the aspects of teaching quality (TQ), student support (SS), and skill development (SD), they express dissatisfaction with the aspect of learning resources (LR) and learner engagement (LE) in the sampled HLIs. The findings interestingly reveal that while academic staff are satisfied with the TQ and SD, they stress dissatisfaction with the LE in their respective HLIs