curriculum orientations of pre-service teachers in jordan : a required reform initiative for professional development



The primary purpose of this study was to determine the curriculum orientations of pre-service teachers at a university in Jordan. Rigorous translation procedures were utilized to validate an Arabic version of the Curriculum Orientation Inventory (COI) for use in Jordan. The validated COI was administered to a sample of 259 pre-service teachers who were enrolled in the teacher education program offered by the Hashemite University. Principle axis factoring with oblique rotation resulted in a latent factor structure highly consistent with the English version of the COI. Results also indicated that pre-service teachers valued all the curriculum orientations to various degrees. In more specific terms, they highly valued the Cognitive Process orientation followed by the Social Reconstruction orientation and the Humanistic orientation. Lastly, gender differences were detected only for the Cognitive Process orientation with males valuing this orientation higher than did females. (Contains 2 tables.) (ERIC: As Provided)