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Perceptions of High Stakes Testing and Burnout as Predictors of Quality of Life Among Primary School Teachers in Trinidad and Tobago
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This study explored how high-stakes testing (HST) and burnout affected the quality of primary school teachers in Trinidad and Tobago. HST refers to school exams often required by government agencies that are used to make key decisions pertaining to students, teachers, and schools (Embse & Hanson, 2012). Burnout is defined operationally as a psychological syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and impaired personal accomplishment induced by repeated workplace stressors (Maslach & Schaufeli, 2017). Quality of life (QoL) is the measure of an individual’s ability to function physically, emotionally, and socially within his/her environment at a level consistent with his/her own expectations (World Health Organization [WHO] 2002). In Trinidad and Tobago, primary school teachers face high levels of stress and burnout due to the pressure of HST, which have been criticized for its negative impact on student, learning, curriculum, and equity. (Gowrie et al., 2015). The paucity of literature regarding how HST affects teacher QoL (Cunningham 2021) was cause for concern as teacher QoL has implications for their professional development, retention, and satisfaction, as well as for the quality of education they provide to their students.
Methodology
This quantitative study adopted a non-experimental correlational design to examine the relationship among the predictor variables of perceptions of HST and burnout and the dependent variable, QoL. The data were collected by a survey administered to 322 teachers who taught standards four and five. Descriptive and inferential statistics using structural equation modelling were used to answer the following research questions. • What is the quality of life among primary school teachers in Trinidad and Tobago? • What perceptions do primary school teachers have of high stakes standardized testing? • What are the levels of burnout among the teachers? • To what extent do perceptions of high stakes standardized testing and burnout predict quality of life among primary school teachers?
Findings
The impact of HST on burnout among teachers preparing students for the Secondary Entrance Assessment in Trinidad and Tobago was positive and significant (β = 0.26, t = 3.319, p = \u3c .001); the impact of burnout on QoL of the teachers was positive and significant (β = .79, t = 6.749, p = \u3c .001). The impact of HST on QoL without burnout was positive and significant (β = .181, t = 2.764, p = .006), and the impact of HST on QoL in the presence of burnout was negative and insignificant (β = -0.03, t = -.501, p = .620). Therefore, burnout fully mediated the impact of HST on QoL.
Conclusion
In general, teachers of the Secondary Entrance Assessment classes in Trinidad and Tobago experienced a moderately satisfactory QoL; they were not sure how they felt about HST. The stress and pressure associated with HST, and specifically the Secondary Entrance Assessment, contributed significantly to burnout, specifically to high emotional exhaustion. However, approximately 2% of the teachers presented with high burnout, approximately 1% presented with medium burnout, and approximately 3% presented with low burnout
Maternal Involvement, Parenting Styles and Socioeconomic Status as Predictors of Academic Achievement of Standard 5 students in Trinidad and Tobago
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Underachievement remains a long-standing issue for the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago. This has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which deleteriously impacted the education system. School closures became mandatory, and online learning was implemented throughout the education system. The results of the 2022 sitting of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exams emphasized the issue of underachievement, with a significant decline in performance. Only 37.06% of students scored above the 50% mark. Familial factors such as parenting styles and parental involvement have been noted in the literature to positively impact students’ academic achievement (Borup et al., 2019; Checa et al., 2019; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2017; Harper, 2019; Ishak et al., 2012.; Murray, 2012; Sahithya et al., 2019; Scharton, 2019; Seth & Ghormode, 2013). However, no known studies explored to what extent these parenting variables have impacted the performance at SEA. The pandemic also resulted in widespread job losses, salary cuts, and the closure of industries, making socioeconomic status more relevant to educational outcomes. Goudeau et al. (2021) noted that digitizing the education learning process necessitated the use of technology, exacerbating social-class academic disparities. The impact of maternal involvement and parental styles, as well as the socioeconomic impact of SES on the SEA exams during the pandemic, is yet to be examined.
The Method
This study employed a quantitative, non-experimental correlational approach to investigate the relationships between parenting styles, maternal involvement, socioeconomic status, and the outcome variable, academic achievement. It used a cross-sectional survey of Likert scales on structured web-based questionnaires managed on the SurveyMonkey user platform. Respondents consisted of 393 mothers of students who sat for the 2022 Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam. The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences Statistics 29 (SPSS, IBM) and Analysis of Moment Structures 29 (AMOS) software. Statistical techniques employed included descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses were used on all instruments to identify their underlying factor structure within the context of this sample.
The Results
Authoritative parenting was the predominant style practiced by mothers, followed by authoritarian and neglectful parenting. There was a weak relationship between the permissive scale and its latent factor, with only 2% of the variability attributed to the parenting factor. Despite the perceptions of mothers being highly demanding of their children in this culture, a very high level of maternal warmth was reported, as measured by the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ). There was a high level of maternal involvement across all six dimensions. However, the results showed that maternal involvement did not significantly affect students’ academic achievement on the exam nor mediate the relationships between parenting styles and achievement or socioeconomic status and achievement. Parenting styles had no significant relationship with academic achievement, and neither did it mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status and achievement. Socioeconomic status on the other hand, directly influenced academic achievement but failed to influence maternal involvement. Overall, the final model produced an acceptable model fit with the data, accounting for 32% of the variance in academic achievement.
Conclusion
This study demonstrated that in the context of COVID-19, traditional forms of parenting involvement were insufficient to impact academic achievement at the SEA exam. It did not mediate the relationships between parenting styles and achievement and socioeconomic status and achievement. Socioeconomic status was a robust predictor of academic achievement but did not statistically influence maternal involvement. On the other hand, parenting styles had direct influence on maternal involvement but had no statistically significant effect on achievement
Centrifugal Forces Impacting Urbanization in the Eastern Mediterranean during Roman and Early Islamic Times
Get PDFMy goal with this essay is to make the existence of a distinctive Levantine cultural paradigm a lens through which to examine long-term patterns of urbanization and cultural change in the Eastern Mediterranean—focusing especially on present-day Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Inspired by the agenda and approach of global history, the essay is an attempt to highlight a number of salient features of societal formation processes in this region that set them apart from such processes in the heartlands of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The paradigm holds that societal formation dynamics in the Levant have been dominated more by centrifugal than by centripetal forces, thus predisposing local social order in the region towards greater local agency, resiliency, polycentrism, heterarchical social structure and societal complexity less conspicuously reflected in grand monumentality. The implications of this hypothesis for understanding urban resilience in the Late Roman and Early Islamic periods in the Eastern Mediterranean will be explored drawing, in particular, on previous research on the “cities of the Decapolis” and on findings of archaeological excavations at Tall Hisban and the wider Madaba Plains region in Jordan
Legacy of Beauty: A Festschrift in Honor of Jo Ann Davidson
No full textJo Ann Davidson, PhD, is the first woman in the Seventh-day Adventist Church to earn a doctorate in systematic theology. In additional, she is the first woman in the Seventh-day Adventist Church to be hired as a professor of systematic theology at the graduate level, teaching at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Among many other accomplishments, she was also the first female president of the Adventist Theological Society.In honor of Jon Ann\u27s trailblazing contributions, this Festschrift is published by the Adventist Theological Society. All chapters are written by female Seventh-day Adventist theologians and scholars, whose paths have crossed with Jo Ann\u27s in a meaningful way.The title of this book, Legacy of Beauty, was chosen because of Jo Ann\u27s love for and expertise in the theology of beauty, culminating in her dissertation Toward a Theology of Beauty: A Biblical Perspective. Each chapter in this Festschrift focuses on some aspect of beauty in the Bible, from literary and narratival complexity, to archaeological findings and homiletical applications.https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/books/1337/thumbnail.jp
Guest Episode: With Dr. Torben Bergland on Fanaticism
No full textThis guest episode features the psychiatrist Dr. Torben Bergland on the topic of fanaticism. What is fanaticism? How prevalent is it? What are the best angles to explore it? Is it a matter of cognitive closure or a type of psychopathology? If neither, then what is it? Could the concept be wielded as powerplay where others, simply by virtue of being different than us, get labeled so? How is it related to the post-truth phenomenon? Are there positive aspects of fanaticism? If by definition one is not aware of one\u27s own fanatical tendencies, how can individuals ever become aware of those?... These are but some of the issues that Ante and Oliver probe with their guest