Lee Ai Noi

This study examined the quality of teacher assignments and associated student work in Singapore schools. Using the authentic intellectual quality framework, two sets of standards and scoring rubrics were developed for the training of teachers to judge the quality of assignments and student work. The samples of teacher assignments and student work were collected in English, Social Studies, Mathematics, and Science subject areas from 30 elementary schools and 29 high schools. There were significant differences for the authentic intellectual quality of teachers’ assignments by subject area, stream, and grade level. Subject area effect was found to be larger than stream and grade level effects. Likewise, the differences of authentic intellectual quality for student work were significant and varied by subject area, stream, and grade level. Subject area effect was large. The correlations between the quality of teachers’ assignment tasks and student work were strong and significant at both grade levels. The findings suggest that teacher professional development in high authentic intellectual quality task design is necessary for improving student learning and performance.

Description of the aims of this research project This research project has two objectives: (1) identify a repertoire of school leaders' autonomy-supportive behaviours which are a ssociated with teachers' psychological needs satisfaction and autonomous motivation; and (2) develop and validate an Autonomy-Supportive School Leadership Behaviours scale for assessing school leaders' autonomy-supportive behaviours. There are two research questions to guide the study:
1. Which behaviours of school leaders are perceived by teachers as 'autonomysupportive'? 2. What is the psychometric property of the Autonomy-Supportive School Leadership Behaviours scale?

Based on the perspective of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), this research examined the mediating role of teachers’ psychological needs satisfaction in explaining the relationships between perceived principal’s learning support and teachers’ work-related outcomes. Results from a convenience sample of 180 Singapore primary school teachers revealed that perceived principal’s learning support directly predicted psychological needs satisfaction (i.e. autonomy, competence and relatedness), change-oriented work behaviour and organisational commitment. Psychological needs satisfaction partially mediated the relationships between perceived principal’s learning support and change-oriented work behaviour as well as organisational commitment. The findings could contribute useful insights to teacher education and SDT research and practice.

This study examined the quality of teachers‟ assessment tasks and associated student work in the Singapore Science classrooms. Using the authentic intellectual quality framework, two sets of standards and scoring rubrics were developed for the training of teachers to judge the quality of teachers‟ science assessment tasks and student work. The samples of teachers‟ assessment tasks and student work were collected from 30 elementary schools and 29 high schools. The results show that the teachers‟ assessment tasks at both grade levels did not demand high authentic intellectual performance from students. As a result, student work did not demonstrate high authentic intellectual quality. The findings suggest the need for improving teachers‟ assessment literacy in science through professional development in authentic assessments.

Student success in the 21st century requires not only the mastery of basic classroom-type knowledge and skills but also the ability to engage in higher-order thinking, reasoning, and real-world problem solving. This will enable our students to become productive workers and responsible citizens who can also actively participate in lifelong learning. A number of researchers in the United States and Australia have systematically examined the authentic intellectual quality of the teachers’ assessment tasks/assignments and student work in response to the tasks/assignments (e.g., Newmann & Associates, 1996; Luke et al., 2000; Lingard & Ladwig, 2001). These studies have shown that when teachers design and use highintellectual quality assignments that demand higher-order thinking, in-depth understanding of knowledge, elaborated communication, and making connections to students’ lives beyond school, students produce higher quality intellectual work. This paper reports the preliminary findings from teacher-moderated judgments of written assignments or assessment tasks and student work in Singapore. The teachers’ assignments/assessment tasks and student work were collected from 36 Singaporean schools across four major subject areas: English, Social Studies, Mathematics, and Science at the Primary 5 and Secondary 3 levels. Subject-specific panels were formed by a group of experienced teachers. They were trained to understand the authentic intellectual standards and to use the scoring rubrics collaboratively prior to their actual scoring of the teachers’ assignments and student work. The paper will report the outcomes of the statistical comparisons of authentic intellectual quality of the teachers’ assignments and that of related student work across subject areas, grade levels, and streams.

Using a convenience sample of 289 teachers in Singapore, this study examined: (1) whether there were significant differences between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours; and (2) teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in relation to teachers’ psychological empowerment. Results indicated that teachers perceived their principals and immediate supervisors as exercising empowering behaviours in their daily practices, but they also perceived their principal and immediate supervisor differing in magnitude in some specific dimensions of empowering behaviours such as delegation of authority, providing individualised concern and support, articulating a vision and fostering collaborative relationships. Results also indicated that teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours were positively associated with teachers’ psychological empowerment, and that they added unique variance to each other in predicting teachers’ psychological empowerment. This study suggests the importance of considering teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours as two distinct constructs in empirical research so that their unique predictive power could be more aptly captured. From a practical standpoint, it suggests the importance for school leadership developers to enhance school leaders’ awareness and capacity in exercising empowering behaviours towards their teachers in their daily practice. Essentially, schools may stand to gain from developing empowering leaders at different levels of management to promote teachers’ psychological empowerment.

This thesis presents a current research which attempted to address the main research question: What are the predictive relationships among teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours, teachers’ psychological empowerment and teachers’ work-related outcomes in terms of job satisfaction, organisational commitment and professional commitment? The current research comprised four separated but related empirical studies. The research sample consisted of 304 teachers in Singapore.

Study 1 developed and validated the School Leader Empowering Behaviours (SLEB) scale. 304 teachers were randomly split into two sub-samples. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted using sub-sample 1 (N=142) to determine the number of factors and select the items. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted using subsample 2 (N=162) for cross-validation to confirm the factorial structure of the scale and examine the model-data fit. Results from both EFA and CFA provided support for a seven-factor SLEB scale with three items for each sub-scale. The seven factors could be further collapsed into a higher-order factor. Each sub-scale of the SLEB showed good internal consistency reliability and predictive validity.

Study 2 examined whether teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours would differ significantly on each of the seven dimensions and the composite score of the School Leader Empowering Behaviours (SLEB) scale. Results from paired sample t-tests indicated that teachers generally perceived their respective principals to have engaged in fostering collaborative relationships and articulating a vision more frequently than their respective immediate supervisors. Teachers also perceived their respective immediate supervisors to have engaged in delegating authority and providing individualised concern and support more frequently than their respective principals. There were no significant differences between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in terms of their composite scores and three dimensions of the SLEB scale: providing intellectual stimulation, providing role-modelling, and providing acknowledgement and recognition.

Study 3 examined the relationships among teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours, the four dimensions of teachers’ psychological empowerment (i.e. teachers’ sense of meaning, competence, autonomy, and impact) and teachers’ work-related outcomes. The study was guided by a theoretical framework which integrated the social structural and psychological perspectives of empowerment and conceptualised teacher empowerment as an integrated process. Using path analysis, results indicated that the four dimensions of teachers’ psychological empowerment had differential relations with teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours as well as teachers’ work-related outcomes in terms of job satisfaction, organisational commitment and professional commitment. Results indicated that the four dimensions of teachers’ psychological empowerment mediated the relationships between teachers’ perceptions of immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours and the three teachers’ work-related outcomes. However, only teachers’ sense of meaning, autonomy and impact, but not competence, mediated the relationships between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s empowering behaviours and the three teachers’ work-related outcomes.

Study 4 examined the joint relationship between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in predicting the four dimensions of teachers’ psychological empowerment (i.e. teachers’ sense of meaning, competence, autonomy, and impact). Results from moderated path analysis and simple slope tests indicated that there was an interactive relationship between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in predicting three out of four dimensions of teachers’ psychological empowerment, in terms of teachers’ sense of meaning, competence and autonomy, but not impact. Results also indicated that different moderating mechanisms (i.e. enhancing and substituting) underscored the interactive relationship between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in predicting teachers’ sense of meaning, competence and autonomy. Whereas, an additive relationship was found between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in predicting teachers’ sense of impact. Teachers’ perceptions of principal’s empowering behaviours accounted for more significant unique variance than teachers’ perceptions of immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in predicting teachers’ sense of impact.

Overall, this thesis extends on previous works of teacher empowerment by taking into consideration both social structural and psychological perspectives of empowerment in conceptualising teacher empowerment as an integrated process. This thesis could contribute significantly to teacher empowerment research as well as provide evidence-based support for the practice of teacher empowerment.

The present study examined the relations between three motivational variables, i.e. academic self-efficacy, task importance, and interest with three types of learning behaviours, i.e. class engagement, metacognitive self-regulation, and avoidance coping with 1954 secondary students in Singapore. Positive correlations were found between the three motivational variables, class engagement and metacognitive self-regulation, whereas negative correlations were found between the three motivational variables and avoidance coping. Multiple regression analysis results showed that academic self-efficacy, interest and task importance all significantly predicted class engagement. However, only academic self-efficacy and interest significantly predicted metacognitive self-regulation and avoidance coping, but not task importance. The results were similar for both boys and girls. These findings suggest that academic self-efficacy and interest have a more desirable motivational function in comparison with task importance, especially when students face challenging tasks in learning English. Important implications for teaching are discussed.

Despite a growing interest in using empowerment as a leadership strategy to enhance teachers’ work motivation to play a more central role in educational change, there is still limited research on how leaders in school organisations empower teachers. One possible reason might be due to the lack of relevant measures for assessing empowering behaviours of leaders in the educational contexts. This study developed and validated the School Leader Empowering Behaviours (SLEB) scale in the Singapore educational context. A convenience sample of 304 teachers from the Singapore schools participated in the study. The sample was randomly split into two sub-samples, Sample 1 (N = 142) and Sample 2 (N = 162). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted in Sample 1 to determine the number of factors and select the items. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted in Sample 2 for cross-validation to confirm the factorial structure of the scale and examine the model-data fit. Results from both EFA and CFA provided support for a seven-factor SLEB scale as well as a higher order factor structure. Each sub-scale of the SLEB showed good internal consistency reliability and predictive validity. The potential uses of the SLEB scale were also discussed.

This study examined the predictive relationships among psychological needs satisfaction (in terms of autonomy, competence and relatedness), creative growth mindset, life adaptability, and satisfaction with life. A sample of 130 individuals of above age 40 in Singapore voluntarily participated in this study by completing a structured questionnaire. Path analysis was conducted to examine the predictive relationships among the variables. Results revealed that the need for competence directly predicted life adaptability but not satisfaction with life. Need for relatedness directly predicted satisfaction with life but not life adaptability. Need for autonomy directly predicted satisfaction with life but also indirectly predicted life adaptability via creative growth mindset. This study highlighted the differential impacts of the three psychological needs on different life outcomes and also the mediating role of creative growth mindset in enhancing life adaptability.