MED858: REFLECTIONS ON READING

VALIDATION OF AN INSTRUMENT TO MONITOR MY STUDENTS' FACE-TO-FACE PHILOSOPHY COMMUNITES OF INQUIRY by Yip Meng Fai and Quek Choon Lang.

It is interesting that the researcher chose to do this study for the subject Philosophy. Perhaps this subject is rarely taken by students in the age group concerned and that is why there is a need to validate the instrument, as there are no validated instrument for Philosophy. I don't think this validated instrument would be used by many schools as most schools do not offer Philosophy. Nevertheless, this study does address the lack of a LE instrument not developed in this subject area.

Under Methodolgy, the resercher used "grade 7-10" instead of "secondary 1-4". Clearly, this paper was meant for the international audience. Most teachers among our midst would be more comfortable with "secondary 1-4".

Validation process consists of Factor Analysis, Testing for Item Reliability and Scale Reliability. I have learnt about this in one short afternoon using SPSS, but I doubt if I am able to comprehen terminologies like "Internal consistency" and "Discriminant validity".

But the part on how the CLES was modifed and why it was modified as such was clearly explained in this paper. After the validation process, it was found that one of the items in the Subject Nature Scale is problematic and thus should be discarded from this instrument. So if ever a teacher wishes to understand the LE in his or her Philosophy class, then this instrument can be used as it is validated.

It is for the benefit of the respondents to the modifed CLES to read:
"Learning about the world" instead of "Personal Relevence"
" Learning about Philosophy" instead of "Subject Nature"
"Learning to speak out" instead of "Critical Voice"
"Learning to communicate" instead of "Student Negotiation".
Table 1 on page 4 would have made it clear to the reader how to match the correct Scales on the survey forms. These four scales were also able to cover the 3 dimensions according to Moos's Scheme.

Appendix 3 indicates to me that Items 7 to 12 are under Subject Nature Scale. But when I checked Appendix 2, Item 12 is under "Learning to speak out". I studied Table 1 on page 4 and concluded that there are 23 items. Table 2 page 6 also has 23 items. But appendix 2 has only 22 items. I believe in appendix 2, there is missing item 12 under Subject Nature Scale. Subsequently, item 13 becomes item 12, item 14 beccomes item 13 and so on. I believe this should be the error.