Title: The writing attitude scale for teachers (WAST)

Authors: Anna H. Hall; Michael D. Toland; Ying Guo

Addresses: Clemson University, 407B Tillman Hall, Clemson, South Carolina 29634, USA ' University of Kentucky, 251C Dickey Hall, Lexington, KY 40506-0017, USA ' University of Cincinatti, 615 Teacher/Dyer Hall, 2610 McMicken Circle, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA

Abstract: This study examines the psychometric properties of the writing attitude scale for teachers (WAST) using scores of preservice teachers to gather evidence of content, internal structure, response processes, reliability/precision, and correlations with external variables. Four contending models were compared using CFA, but the unidimensional model was championed. The WAST was further refined using IRT to 10-items and shown to have high precision across most of the latent continuum. The WAST was shown to have incremental evidence relative to the writing apprehension test when predicting attitudes towards attending a professional development workshop on writing instruction and time devoted to writing instruction.

Keywords: teacher attitudes; writing attitudes; teacher education; CFA; IRT; item response theory; bifactor; attitude scale; psychometrics; professional development; teacher training; pre-service teachers; self-reflection; teaching practices; confirmatory factor analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJQRE.2016.077801

International Journal of Quantitative Research in Education, 2016 Vol.3 No.3, pp.204 - 221

Received: 10 Mar 2015
Accepted: 02 Oct 2015
Published online: 15 Jul 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article