Date of Award

2010

Thesis Type

PhD

Document Type

Thesis

Divisions

Faculty of Education

Department

Department of Educational Psychology and Counselling

Institution

Universiti Malaya

Abstract

This study investigated vocational subjects’ teachers’ implementation of Competency Assessment and Modular Certification (CAMC) in secondary schools. This study aimed to test whether the proposed model of factors influencing Competency Assessment and Modular Certification (CAMC) of vocational subjects in secondary schools fits the empirical data collected from the teachers, to test moderator effects of selected demographic variables such as gender, experience, training and field of specialization on the proposed model, to modify the proposed model to a better fitted parsimonious model and to determine issues and challenges in the implementation of CAMC. This study used the structural equation modeling approach. An a priori model was developed based on literature to explain the relationships between the variables. A set of instrument was developed and administered to 656 schools. A total of 493 respondents were used in the final analysis. In the preliminary analyses, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed in order to determine the best factor structure to represent the latent variables in this study. The structural model fitted adequately to the data [2/df = 1.953, TLI=0.917, CFI=0.920, RMSEA=0.044, AIC =3820.9]. The Quality Assurance Measures explained 4.8% of variance in Teachers’ Receptivity. In addition, Quality Assurance Measures and Teachers’ Receptivity explained 66.1% of variance in Teachers’ Conceptions. Furthermore, Quality Assurance Measures, Teachers’ Receptivity and Teachers’ Conceptions explained 77.6% of variance in Degree of Implementation. In addition, Teachers’ Receptivity showed significant direct effect on Degree of Implementation. There were two pairs of latent variables that showed significant direct effects. They were Quality Assurance Measures on Teachers’ Receptivity and the Teachers’ Receptivity on Teachers’ Conceptions. On the other hand, only the Quality Assurance Measures showed significant indirect effect on the Degree of Implementation through Teachers’ Receptivity. Teachers’ Receptivity mediated the relationship between Quality Assurance Measures and Degree of Implementation. The multiple group analysis of the four demographic variables i.e. gender, experience, training and teachers’ field of specialization indicated that there was no significant difference in the measurement and structural invariance of the models across groups. Finally, there are six categories of issues and barriers found to be faced by the vocational teachers in implementing CAMC. The issues are related to infrastructure, funding, curriculum documents, assessment, teachers and students. The findings of this study and understanding the relationships of the factors chosen in this study to the degree of implementation of CAMC could contribute to the policy makers especially the Malaysia Examination Syndicate (MES) and teacher educators in designing or planning training, monitoring and moderation strategies according to the factors that influenced the degree of implementation of CAMC in particular, and for all the school-based assessment in general. Additionally, the instrument developed in this study could be used to investigate the implementation of a new assessment scheme. Implications of this study and recommendations for future research related to CAMC and for the improvement of the school-based assessment were discussed and outlined.

Initial

khm

Additional Information

Thesis (PhD) – Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya, 2010.

Download

Share

COinS