Developing a Scale on “Factors Regarding Curriculum Alignment”

Abstract

"Curriculum alignment" is the compatibility between a country's centralized curriculum determined by the ministry of education and what teachers do during the teaching process. However, it is observed that teachers do not exactly implement the curriculum. The purpose of this study is to develop a scale that will determine the factors that influence the curriculum alignment. Validity and reliability analyses were carried out to improve the scale. A draft of the scale consisting of 76 items at the end of interviews and literature review was conducted to 573 teachers working in primary and secondary schools. The first sample size was found suitable in terms of such analyses as correlation, anti-image values, linearity, normality and reliability. On a further phase, exploratory factor analysis was carried out for validity examination. After the analyses, a four-dimension-structure that explained 49.5% of the total variance was carried out. The ranges of the items varied from 0.35 to 0.62 and the factor loads varied from 0.450 to 0.767. At the a-end of the analysis, the four dimensions were called "teacher," "curriculum," "education system," and "school." A scientifically significant correlation was calculated among variables. The general reliability co-efficiency of the scale was calculated as 0.94. As a result, it can be said that this scale is efficiently valid and reliable enough to determine the factors that influence curriculum alignment.