Proactive Teaching: Development and Validation of a Scale to Evaluate Constructivist Teaching in Higher Education

Abstract

Background: Constructivist teaching is deemed beneficial across most educational contexts, and is particularly valued and utilized in tertiary settings. Yet to date, no tools have been made available for measuring and evaluating the construct.This study aimed at developing and validating a scale to evaluate the proactive teaching (based on Constructivism) in higher education. Methods: The present research is an exploratory mixed methodology. The statistical population of the present study included all students of psychology, education, social sciences, medicine and management of University of Tehran during the 2015-16 academic years. The first phase of the research involved developing a tool within a framework of qualitative methodology and phenomenology based on semi-structured interviews collected from 100 students selected through purposeful sampling. The second phase incorporated the data collected from 500 students selected by stratified random sampling to validate the six-dimension scale through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Results: The result was the conceptualization of six dimensions of active learning: self-organization, constructivism, cognitive involvement, participation and cooperation, teacher as facilitator, and constructivist evaluation. The results showed that the Proactive Teaching Scale (which includes 6 components and 42 items) has adequate properties to evaluate this teaching method in higher education explaining 53.48% of the total variance. Ordinal Theta coefficient (0.86 - 0.92) indicated good internal validity. Conclusion: The Proactive Teaching Scale provides a valuable tool to evaluate constructivist teaching, and contributes to improved teaching and learning practices in higher education.