Sideridis Georgios, Alghamdi Mohammed
Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Front Psychol. 2024 Jul 29;15:1288174. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1288174. eCollection 2024.
The purpose of the present study was to relate a principal's qualifications with a school's emphasis on academic success. Participants were = 206 principals of respective schools in Saudi Arabia that took part in the study as a function of the TIMSS-2019 assessment. Principals were administered the eleven-item "School Emphasis on Academic Success" scale. A binary covariate defining low and high principal qualifications was computed. The Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model was involved with the latent means of both a general and three specific factors being regressed on the covariate to evaluate latent mean differences across differentially qualified principals. Furthermore, each one of the instrument's indicators was regressed on the principal covariate to evaluate the presence of Differential Item Functioning (DIF) or in other words additional effects due to item content. Results indicated a significant omnibus effect for the general factor only, with highly qualified principals holding significantly more positive beliefs about how parents, teachers, and students feel about their school's emphasis on academic success. Further analyses at the item level indicated that "teacher expectations" were the single item presenting a DIF effect with highly qualified principals having stronger beliefs about their teacher's expectations of student success over and above the latent factor mean. Results are discussed on how they inform educational policy and practice.
本研究的目的是将校长的资质与学校对学业成就的重视程度联系起来。参与者为沙特阿拉伯各学校的206名校长，他们作为2019年国际数学和科学趋势研究（TIMSS）评估的一部分参与了该研究。校长们接受了包含11个项目的“学校对学业成就的重视程度”量表的测试。计算了一个定义校长资质高低的二元协变量。多指标多原因（MIMIC）模型将一个一般因素和三个特定因素的潜在均值对协变量进行回归，以评估不同资质校长之间的潜在均值差异。此外，该量表的每个指标都对校长协变量进行回归，以评估项目功能差异（DIF）的存在，换句话说，即项目内容产生的额外影响。结果表明，仅一般因素存在显著的总体效应，资质高的校长对家长、教师和学生如何看待学校对学业成就的重视程度持有明显更积极的信念。在项目层面的进一步分析表明，“教师期望”是唯一呈现项目功能差异效应的项目，资质高的校长对教师对学生成功的期望持有比潜在因素均值更强的信念。讨论了研究结果对教育政策和实践的启示。
