Teachers' predictions of pupils' attainments in chemistry

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Date
1977
Authors
Suan, Yoong
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Abstract
In curriculum development work, experienced teachers are generally asked to judge the suitability of subject matter relative to the aptitude vocabulary or reading levels and interests of the pupils in order to decide on the grade placement of these subject matter. This study sought to determine the accuracy of Malaysian chemistry teachers' predictions or judgements of their pupils' attainments in chemistry, and to identify correlates associated with the accurate predictions. This study also attempted to find out whether or not teachers predicted the attainments of the various ability pupils differently, and also whether or not they predicted the pupils' attainments of the various behavioural levels of .chemistry instructional objectives differently. A random sample of 74 chemistry teachers were given a list of 30 chemistry instructional objectives. They were asked to predict whether or not each of their pupils chosen from a form four science class could attain each of these objectives. A chemistry achievement test was later administered to measure the pupils' actual attainments of these objectives. The difference between the teacher's prediction and the pupils actual attainment gives a discrepancy index, /d/, as a measure of the predictive accuracy. /d/ is an index taking a value between 0 and 1, in absolute value. The smaller the value of /d/, the more accurate is the prediction. The results showed that the teachers, in general, were fairly accurate in their predictions, especially when taken in a global manner. A 3x3 Analysis of Variance showed that the teachers' predictions of the attainments of the various ability pupils did differ significantly, and that the predictions were most accurate with the high ability pupils, and least accurate with the lower ability pupils. The results also revealed that the teachers did predict the attainments of the various behavioural levels of objectives differently, and that the predictions of the attainments of knowledge objectives were the most accurate. A significant disordinal interaction effect indicated that the predictions were most accurate with high ability pupils in the attainments of the knowledge objectives, and least accurate with low ability pupils in the attainments of higher levels of objectives. • A stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that a weighted linear combination of five variables: mean achievement of the class under prediction, teacher's age, teacher's professional qualification, the number of chemistry periods taught by the teacher, and size of the \ class (number of pupils) under prediction, was highly predictive of · 'i:.he discrepancy index. Tentative recommendations for curriculum practice are suggested, especially on the need for pre-service or in-service training to improve the teacher's prediction or judgement of the low ability pupils in respect of the higher level cognitive behaviours. Since the results have limited generalizability, it is recommended that replication studies involving other disciplines, grade levels, and other groups of people such as curriculum personnel, be conducted. These include in-depth observation and experimental studies.
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Pupils' attainments
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