Browsing by Author "Mohamed, Lawsha"

This study examined the influence of four factors, namely personal capacity, beliefs, aspirations, and school climate in the exercise of teachers' professional agency during curriculum reform in the Maldives. To achieve this aim, the study developed and evaluated the adequacy of measurement models of personal capacity, beliefs, aspirations, and school climate to examine their relationship with teachers’ professional agency. Survey data were collected from 360 teachers from 13 government primary schools located in Male’ city, the capital of Maldives. The questionnaire measured professional agency and its underlying factors with 38 items rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale. An exploratory factor analysis followed by a confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the measurement models and the full-fledged structural model of professional agency fit the data collected from the Maldivian teachers. Furthermore, the analysis provided evidence for the convergent and discriminant validity and composite reliability of the scales indicating the adequacy of all measurement models. The results of Structural Equation Modelling analysis revealed that personal capacity and beliefs significantly and positively influenced teachers’ professional agency as the study had hypothesized. However, the other two proposed constructs, school climate and aspirations, were not significant correlates of agency. More significantly, the study has theoretically and empirically validated a structural model of factors influencing teachers’ professional agency during curriculum reform with important practical implications. The findings should guide relevant authorities in the Maldivian teacher education system to plan and implement results-driven training for both in-service and pre-service teachers to develop and further enhance their capacities towards professional agency.

This study examined secondary mathematics teachers` beliefs and use of instructional strategies that promote problem solving. It is a census study conducted in capital city of Maldives, Male` City involving sixty seven secondary mathematics teachers. A self constructed, two part questionnaire was used to determine teachers` beliefs and use of instructional strategies that promote problem solving. It consisted of seven subscales; teachers` self efficacy, importance of problem solving, use of strategies: explaining, sharing, exploring, questioning and coaching and two overall scales; overall belief scale and use of strategies scale. The findings of this study revealed that most of the teachers have strong self efficacy beliefs and strong beliefs about importance of problem solving approach. However teachers had weak beliefs about using technology to promote problem solving where teachers believed that using calculators is not a good habit and computational procedures should not be automatized. The results of teachers` use of strategies that promote problem solving revealed that most of the teachers frequently use these strategies. However, results showed the two least famous strategies among the teachers were presenting students with unfamiliar and open ended problems with very little indication of how to sob1e them and providing a set of problems and allowing the students to choose a problem they would like to work on. Furthermore, study also showed that there is no gender difference in beliefs and use of strategies. However, a significant difference was found between nationality of teachers, level of professional training and years of experience and some scales of beliefs and use of strategies. Another major finding of the study is that there is a positive relationship between beliefs and use of instructional strategies that promote problem solving. The study also indicated that a relationship exists between self efficacy, explaining and over all beliefs of teachers and the demographic variables which is gender, nationality, professional training and years of experience.