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Beliefs and needs of academic teachers: a latent class analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Silvia Bacci

    (Florence Center for Data Science, Università degli Studi di Firenze)

  • Bruno Bertaccini

    (Florence Center for Data Science, Università degli Studi di Firenze)

  • Alessandra Petrucci

    (Florence Center for Data Science, Università degli Studi di Firenze)

Abstract

In the last few years, academic guidance services of the Italian universities have been increasingly involved in planning and organising training courses for academic teachers to improve the quality of teaching. In such a context, it is important to collect information on the teachers’ opinions about their belief on traditional and innovative approaches to teaching and learning evaluation as well as on their need of support to take effective teaching practices. In this contribution we aim at studying the structure of academic teachers’ population of an Italian university in order to detect groups of teachers that are homogenous in terms of beliefs and needs. As beliefs and needs may be conceptualised in terms of an unobservable (or latent) variable composed of multiple traits related with different aspects of beliefs and needs (e.g., passion for teaching, beliefs about teaching methods, ...), the proposed analysis is based on a multidimensional Latent Class Item Response Theory model. This type of model allows us to classify teachers in latent classes with respect to their beliefs and needs in the academic didactic activities. Moreover, it also allows us to identify specific aspects of teaching with respect to which academic teachers tend to disagree/agree, and to relate beliefs and needs of teachers with their individual characteristics. The study involves a sample of academic teachers coming from the University of Florence (IT) that took part in a survey based on a new questionnaire composed of Likert-type items concerning beliefs and needs on several aspects of teaching.

Suggested Citation

  • Silvia Bacci & Bruno Bertaccini & Alessandra Petrucci, 2020. "Beliefs and needs of academic teachers: a latent class analysis," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 29(3), pages 597-617, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:stmapp:v:29:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s10260-019-00495-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s10260-019-00495-5
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    4. Bruno Bertaccini & Antonio Giusti & Alessandra Petrucci, 2019. "Students’ opinions on teaching and services provided by the Italian Universities: a proposal for a new evaluation scheme," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 1037-1050, March.
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