Western instructors' beliefs in their own and their western administration's efficacy in a western educational institution located in the Middle East

Lush, Barry R. (2015) Western instructors' beliefs in their own and their western administration's efficacy in a western educational institution located in the Middle East. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The Middle East is experiencing very rapid growth in post-secondary education due to the large number of Arab youth who require advanced educational and vocational skills (United Nations Development Program Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development, 2002). This need is more than the locally established Middle East colleges and universities can accommodate. Because of this gap in the number of spaces available at local Arab post-secondary educational institutions, Arab states have invited numerous Western educational institutions to help fill this need (Bhandari & El-Amine, 2012). This research examines teachers’ beliefs at one such Western institution located in a Middle East state. This research investigates two important concepts related to teachers’ beliefs at the Western educational institution located in the Middle East: teachers’ beliefs in their own self-efficacy and teachers’ beliefs in the Western administration’s efficacy. Using Woolfolk Hoy’s (2012) survey, Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (Short form), and Hoy’s (2003a) survey, Enabling School Structure (ESS), as well as face-to-face interviews, this research examines Western teachers’ beliefs in their own self-efficacy and their beliefs in the Western administration’s efficacy at a Western educational institution located in the Middle East. The teachers were divided into two groups, those with previous international teaching experience and those without. This research found that, based on an unpaired t-test, there was no significant difference, between the two groups of Western teachers and that both groups had a relatively high level of belief in their own self-efficacy once they are behind closed classroom doors. This indicates that the physical location of the Western institution did not negatively impact the teachers’ beliefs in their self-efficacy. However, for both groups, their belief in the Western administration’s efficacy was low, less than 98% efficacy according to the finding on the ESS port of this research when compared to the Ohio normative sample developed from the Enabling School Structure survey. In other words, the Western instructors at this satellite campus of a Western college believed that their Western administration was far more coercive than the majority of the schools in the Ohio normative sample. Although both groups rated the Western administration’s efficacy as low, those instructors who had previous international teaching experience rated the Western college administration 2 percentage points lower, or 99% more coercive than the schools in the Ohio normative sample, than those Western instructors who had no previous international experience, 97% coercive than the schools in the Ohio normative sample. The results for this portion of the research showed a significant difference using an unpaired t-test with a Bonferroni Correction for type-1 error on three of the 12 items. The three items were the administration enabling authentic communication, the administrative hierarchy of the school enabling instructors to do their jobs, and the administrative hierarchy obstructing student achievement.

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