Research and Development of a School Administrator Empowerment Model That Creates Engagement with Teachers’ Research

Abstract

The purposes of the research were: 1) to analyze definition of factors and indicators in teachers’ research engagement and to investigate model validity of teachers’ research engagement; 2) to construct and develop a school administrator empowerment model to elevate the level of teachers’ research engagement; 3) to investigate the effect of the school administrator empowerment model aiming to elevate the level of teachers’ research engagement. The research was divided into 3 phases. Phase 1 dealt with development of teachers’ research engagement indicators, construction of confirmatory factors for indicator examination, and setting the factors of teachers’ research engagement. The sample for confirmatory analysis comprised 500 people, obtained through multi-stage sampling; Phase 2 dealt with development of the school administrator empowerment model that creates engagement with teachers’ research, using concepts and theories from the documents that the researcher studied in Phase 1. This phase also dealt with the study on the implementation of the school administrator empowerment model that creates engagement with teachers’ research; Phase 3 had the target group of 22 teachers from schools in Pho Sai District. The analysis of data employed basic statistics, confirmatory factor analysis for LISREL 8.72 program, and content analysis.

        The research findings are as follows:

        1) There were 3 factors of teacher’s research engagement: reading research works, doing research and using research results, and reflecting research results. Each factor had 3 indicators. The investigation into model validity of teachers’ research engagement found that the index of construct validity examination of the school administrator empowerment model that creates engagement with teachers’ research was consistent with the empirical data. The indicators in each secondary factor and every factor weight of the latent variable were statistically significant at the 0.01 level. And it was found that the set of indicators had endogenous coherence and convergent validity and the teacher’s research engagement model had construct validity, and the hypothesis model had coherence with empirical data (Chi-square=14.107, p= 0.079, df=8, GFI=0.994, AGFI=0.965, RMR=0.012).

        2) The school administrator empowerment model that creates engagement with teachers’ research developed empowerment on 2 dimensions: supporting and giving feedbacks. Each dimension comprised goal setting, building ability, self–development and principles of reform or principles of change. These brought about 8 guidelines. Each guideline had 2 empowerment activities, except the principles of reform or principles of change that had 2 activities. There were 14 activities, totally. The quality of the tool could be found in the content validity which was considered by the expert to be from 0.80 to 1.00 in all of the activities.

          3) The effects of the school administrator empowerment model that creates engagement with teachers’ research revealed the teachers’ research engagement at the high, moderate and low levels as rated by 5, 9 and 8 people, respectively. The teachers who were at the high level of research engagement had been empowered with 14 activities: 7 supporting activities and 7 activities of giving feedbacks. The teachers were satisfied with participation in the project. They had better development of doing research and had more favorable attitude toward research. They wanted to continue doing research, and the administrator should encourage doing research by making it part of the regular work, together with the teacher’s organizing for learning and teaching. The teacher’s research engagement should be made a tool to build a system and mechanism of building researcher teachers in the school operation plan. A system and mechanism of building researcher teachers should be built, and a monitoring system should be built in order to monitor teachers’ development on research, aiming at developing teachers toward being experts.