ICCS 2009 Technical Report - IEA

In Question 19, teachers were asked to indicate how many students from their lessons wereparticipating in a range of class activities (“all or nearly all,” “most of them,” “some of them,”“none or hardly any”). The eight items for this question were used to form the scale teachers’reports of students’ participation in class activities (TSTCLACT), which had a reliability of 0.83 forthe pooled ICCS sample. Country reliabilities ranged from 0.60 to 0.88 (see Table 12.24).Table 12.25 shows the item wording as well as the item parameters that were used for scaling.Higher values on this scale reflect higher reported levels of student participation in classactivities.Figure 12.14 shows the results of the confirmatory factor analysis of the three item sets. TheRMSEA fit index showed a close model fit for the three-factor solution whereas the NNFIand CFI had relatively low values, suggesting lack of fit for this model. Generally, the factorloadings were quite high, which indicates high reliabilities of measurement at the item level. Allthree latent factors were positively correlated with one another.Teachers’ perceptions of participation in the communityThe reliabilities of the two scales that were derived from questions regarding teachers’perceptions of participation in the community are reported in Table 12.26. The two scales, bothof which are included in the ICCS teacher database, are:• Teachers’ perceptions of students’ activities in the community (TSTUDACT);• Teachers’ personal participation in activities outside school (TCHACT).Seven of the eight items accompanying Question 15 were used to construct the scale teachers’perceptions of students’ activities in the community (TSTUDACT). The items in the question requiredteachers to indicate whether, during the past year, their classes had taken part in activities thatcould be carried out by the school in cooperation with external groups/organizations (“yes”or “no”). Higher scale scores reflect greater perceived student participation in activities in thecommunity. This scale had a reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of 0.75 for the pooled ICCS sampleand reliabilities that ranged from 0.54 to 0.79 across the participating countries (see Table12.26). The item parameters that were used for scaling are shown in Table 12.27.The 11 items associated with Question 16 required teachers to rate how often they personallyparticipated in activities conducted by organizations/groups outside of their school work(“never,” “a few times,” “about once a month,” “more than once a month”). These items formedthe scale teachers’ personal participation in activities outside school (TCHACT), with higher scoresrelating to greater levels of teacher participation. The reliability of TCHACT was 0.80 for thepooled ICCS sample; reliabilities across the participating countries ranged from 0.66 to 0.85(see Table 12.26). Table 12.27 presents the item parameters that were used for scaling.Figure 12.15 shows the results of the confirmatory factor analysis for these item sets. TheRMSEA value of 0.052 suggested a satisfactory model fit for the two-factor solution. However,both the NNFI and CFI had relatively low fit values. Factor loadings tended to be quite highfor both item sets, and the two latent factors were positively correlated at 0.64, which suggeststhat teachers who reported having themselves been involved in community activities alsorecorded higher frequencies of community participation with their target-grade classes.200ICCS 2009 technical report