Isabella Yuen Fun Wong

The Relationships among School Types, Teacher Efficacy Beliefs, and Academic Climate: Perspective from Asian Middle Schools.

ABSTRACT The authors explored how prior student achievement, through school types, predicted teacher self- and collective efficacy and perceived academic climate of 222 middle school teachers in Singapore. Teachers assigned to high-track and regular middle schools differed in their perception of self- and collective efficacy to promote organizational changes and student achievement, and of the academic climate of the school. Prior achievement was shown to be best predicted by perceived teacher collective efficacy and academic climate, but not self-efficacy. Further analyses revealed that the teacher collective efficacy partially mediated the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and academic climate. These findings were discussed with respect to the sociocognitive perspective.

Cross-cultural invariance of the Academic Expectations Stress Inventory: adolescent samples from Canada and Singapore.

We provide further evidence for the two-factor structure of the 9-item Academic Expectations Stress Inventory (AESI) using confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 289 Canadian adolescents and 310 Singaporean adolescents. Examination of measurement invariance tests the assumption that the model underlying a set of scores is directly comparable across groups. This study also examined the cross-cultural validity of the AESI using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis across both the Canadian and Singaporean adolescent samples. The results suggested cross-cultural invariance of form, factor loadings, and factor variances and covariances of the AESI across both samples. Evidence of AESIs convergent and discriminant validity was also reported. Findings from t-tests revealed that Singaporean adolescents reported a significantly higher level of academic stress arising from self expectations, other expectations, and overall academic stress, compared to Canadian adolescents. Also, a larger cross-cultural effect was associated with academic stress arising from other expectations compared with academic stress arising from self expectations.

Educational collaboration across borders: the preparation of the Transforming teacher education. Redefined professionals for 21st century schools report

This paper provides an account of the processes leading to the report Transforming teacher education. Redefined professionals for 21st century schools undertaken by the International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes. The report is a unique document, neither a series of country studies nor one based on an extensive review of the literature. Rather, it attempted to strongly reflect widely varying contexts and responses in teacher education in Asia, Europe, Brazil, Canada and the USA given key global imperatives. This paper traces the rationale, origin and development of the International Alliance, institutional members, and its objectives. The paper also articulates the distinctive collegial process and key decisions involved in the identification of themes, the different contributions of scholars, and the unique challenges of consolidating the vast amount of information across different contexts, languages and cultures. Finally, four key assertions and a summary of implications for teacher preparation and development will be presented based on the Alliance report.