Exploring Taiwanese undergraduates' perceptions of teacher authority toward Internet-based learning environments

Abstract

Due to the scarcity of research regarding the issue of teacher authority under the context of Internet-based learning environments, the current study aimed to develop and validate an instrument named Revised-Teacher Authority Survey (Revised-TAS) to explore 282 Taiwanese undergraduates’ perceptions of teacher authority toward Internet based learning environments. The Revised-TAS instrument consists of three dimensions of teacher authority based on past theoretical and empirical literature including content authority, process authority, and intellectual authority. To establish and ensure the reliability and validity of Revised-TAS instrument, both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted. The results support our proposed three dimensions of teacher authority under the context of Internet-based learning environment and indicate the Revised-TAS instrument items have good reliability, convergent, and construct validity. In addition, according to the paired t-test results, it is found that the Taiwanese undergraduates perceived teacher authority as a student-centered oriented in the aspect of content authority; whereas, they perceived teacher authority as a teacher-centered oriented in terms of process authority. For the intellectual authority in the Internet-based learning environment, students perceived both student-centered and teacher-centered features. The Revised-TAS instrument can be a valid instrument to evaluate the extent of how students perceive teacher authority in the Internet-based learning environments from the perspectives of content authority, process authority, and intellectual authority.