Measuring Teachers’ Beliefs Quantitatively

Book excerpt: The use of Likert scale instruments for measuring teachers’ beliefs is criticized because of amplifying social desirability, reducing the willingness to make differentiations, and often providing less or no contexts. Those weaknesses may distort teachers’ responses to a Likert scale instrument, causing inconsistencies between their responses and their actions. Therefore, the author offers an alternative approach by employing rank-then-rate items and considering students’ abilities as one of the factors affecting teachers’ beliefs. The results confirm that the offered approach may give a better prediction about teachers’ beliefs than does a Likert scale instrument.