Students' Perceptions Regarding the Fairness of

Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, Issue 38, Winter 2010, 126-145

Students’ Perceptions Regarding the Fairness of Learning Environment in Faculty of Education Niyazi Özer∗ Hasan Demirtaş∗∗ Suggested Citation: Özer, N., & Demirtaş, H. (2010). Students’ perceptions regarding the fairness of learning environment in faculty of education. Egitim ArastirmalariEurasian Journal of Educational Research, 38, 126-145.

Abstract Problem Statement: The desire to be treated fairly is a common human preference. Hence justice can be regarded as an important concern in everyday life including educational settings. There are many studies aiming at determining students’ perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice pertaining to educational settings. The findings of these studies indicate that students’ perceptions of justice are of great importance with regard to many variables contributing to the efficacy and productivity of the education-instruction activities, such as improving a productive teacher-student communication, and enhancing student attention, motivation and achievement. Purpose of the Study: The aim of this research is to determine how the students in the Faculty of Education perceive their learning environment in terms of fairness. Method: The population of this descriptive study comprised a total number of 3.817 students (F= 1.822, M= 1955) attending Faculty of Education at Inönü University during the 2007-2008 fall semester. A sample of the study included a total number of 405 (F= 195, M= 210) students selected from all departments and classes by a proportional stratified sampling method. Data was gathered by a survey instrument entitled: Fair Learning Environment Questionnaire. Independent Samples t-test, One Way

∗ Corresponding Author, Research Assistant, Inonu University, Faculty of Education, TURKEY, [email protected] ∗∗

Assistant Prof. Dr., Inonu University, Faculty of Education, TURKEY, [email protected]

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ANOVA, and LSD tests were performed for the analysis of the data obtained in the survey. Findings and Results: As a result of the research it was found that compared to male students, female students are more likely to perceive their learning environment fair. It was also revealed that students’ perceptions differ significantly in terms of department variable, and students’ perceptions of fairness decrease, as grade level increases. Conclusions and Recommendations: An analysis of the overall findings leads us to conclude that the “partially” and “moderately” fair perception of education institutions’ training future teachers indicates a serious drawback. It is important to note that educational faculties are not only responsible for equipping the future teachers with some sets of knowledge, but above all they are, and supposed to be, the institutions to furnish them with professional teaching attitudes and behaviours. Keywords: learning environment, pre-service teachers, fairness, faculty setting.

As the desire to be treated fairly is a common human preference (Houston & Bettencourt, 1999), justice can be regarded as an important concern in everyday life. Besides, the demand for justice, in terms of equal opportunities for everyone, lays an important foundation for democracy (Tai, 1998). Defined as the “primary virtue of the social institutions” (Rawls, 1971, p.3), justice also affects the way individuals behave in a society or group. Therefore, the concept of justice has frequent reference in legal, political, and religious texts aiming at regulating social life, and receives multi-disciplinary attention. The scope of the term justice can change and transform depending on social developments and changes. Today, when globalization and/or modernization break existing social structures into pieces (Meindl, Hunt & Cheng, 1994) and cause rapid economic, technological, cultural, political, etc. changes and transformations, the concept of justice can be said to include the concept of social justice as well. Social justice, a process based on respect, care, recognition, and empathy (Theoharis, 2007), is defined as “the exercise of altering institutional and organisational arrangements by actively engaging in reclaiming, appropriating, sustaining, and advancing inherent human rights of equity, equality, and fairness in social, economic, educational, and personal dimensions” (Goldfarb & Grinberg, 2002, p.162). In this respect, the provision of the humanitarian rights already provided in social life in the organisational settings as well necessitates organisational justice. For what social justice means for a society coincides with what organisational justice means for an organisation (Beugre, 2002). Organisational justice is nothing new in administrative literature (Forray, 2006), yet has long been neglected in the field of educational administration (Hoy & Tarter, 2004). Organisational justice can be defined, in the broadest sense, as the explanation and determination of the role of justice (Greenberg, 1990) in terms of outputs, processes and interaction in an organisation (Rogelberg, 2007). The theory of

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organisational justice is interested in the extent to which employees perceive justice in work-related issues (Greenberg, 1990). Perceived justice has significant effects on the behaviours and attitudes of employees (Rogelberg, 2007). Previous studies show that perception of justice affects many behaviours including organisational attachment, performance, organisational behaviour, stress, sabotage, thievery etc. With regard to the findings suggesting that the perception of organisational justice is related to many employee behaviours, different approaches have been put forward (Irak, 2004). Based on these approaches, different dimensions of organisational justice have been determined so far. The relevant literature refers to organisational justice under three distinct dimensions (Paterson, Green & Cary, 2002): 1) distributive justice, 2) procedural justice, and 3) interactional justice. Distributive Justice It deals with, in a general sense, the distribution of things (who receives what) in an organisation (Hoy & Tarter, 2004). Distributive justice can be said to date back to the Adams’ theory of equity. According to this theory (1965, as cited in Robbins, 1994), employees perceive what they obtain [outputs] from a work in relation to what they have contributed to that work [inputs]. This is followed by a comparison between their input/output rate and others’ input/output rate (Robbins, 1994). They make a judgement as a result of this comparison. If the individuals think they do receive what they deserve in response to what they have contributed, they will perceive their situation as just. The grades teachers give to students for assessment in the educational context can be an example of distributive justice. To illustrate, while judging the fairness of a grade s/he had in a lesson, a student may compare his/her grade with the grade s/he had expected to have, the grade s/he thinks s/he deserves, or the grades his/her peers were given (Chory-Assad & Paulsel, 2004b). A student perceiving his/her grade as unjust in distributive terms may suffer some depression, state explicitly or implicitly that s/he has been offended, or take an action, which s/he thinks will restore justice (Lizzio, Wilson & Hadaway, 2007). Procedural Justice In other words, justice of a distributive mechanism in an organisation (Byrne & Cropanzano, 2001; Hoy & Tarter, 2004) is related with the decision making process (Konovsky, 2000). Procedural justice is generally associated with the structural characteristics of the decision making process such as the participation of the employees in the decision making, the appropriateness of the evaluation criteria, the reliability of the information used in the decision making process (Cropanzano, Prehar & Chen, 2002). The employees expect the organisation to use equal decision making procedures. In this way all employees can have the right to benefit from the procedures equally (Irak, 2004). While deciding what products or rewards to give to the employees, the employers in an organisation use some standards to evaluate the employees’ performance. For instance, an employer can scrutinize an employee’s personal records, previous performance assessments and productivity reports as criteria before deciding an annual increase in his salary (Chory-Assad & Paulsel, 2004b). In instructional terms, on the other hand, procedural justice comprises the issues such as policies regarding students’ behaviours; the way teachers manage their classes and give grades (i.e., whether subjective or objective criteria are used)


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(Chory-Assad, 2007). As an example, teachers can use such criteria as the students’ attendance, class behaviours, written assignments, and exam scores while granting an end-of-term grade. Procedural justice is related with the way a decision is made about the criteria to be used in evaluating the students’ achievement. Interactional Justice It has been reported in some of the studies about organisational justice that individuals in an organisation are sensitive not only to the justice of the procedures and their outcomes, but also to the treatments they are exposed to while the procedures are actually taking place. This third aspect of organisational justice has been defined as the communication criterion of the justice and is called interactional justice (Irak, 2004). Interactional justice can be practiced generally through interpersonal communication (Cropanzano, Prehar and Phen, 2002). Interactional justice indicates that individuals are made to behave respectfully by the people around them, especially authorities and decision makers (Lizzio et al., 2007). In terms of educational contexts, respectful and fair treatment by the instructors and administrators towards students will create a sense of being a respected member of the group (Lizzio et al., 2007). For instance some researchers state that (Chory-Assad & Paulsel, 2004a) students might perceive interactional justice based on how well instructors treat them and understand their feelings, concerns, and needs. There are many studies aiming at determining students’ perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice pertaining to the educational setting (Chory-Assad, 2002; 2007; Chory-Assad & Paulsel, 2004a; 2004b; Paulsel, 2005; Paulsel & Chory-Assad, 2004a; 2004b; 2004c; Paulsel, Chory-Assad & Dunleavy, 2005; Tata, 1999). The data obtained in these studies show students’ perceptions of justice have both negative and positive effects on their behaviour and the teaching-learning environment. For instance, a decrease in students’ perception of justice [procedural, distributive and/or interactional] gives rise to a variety of undesired behaviours such as aggressiveness towards the teacher, subjective assessment of the teacher, bearing grudges, constant objection, desires for revenge and deception/lying etc. Moreover, other studies (Chory-Assad, 2002; Lizzio et al., 2007) reported a positive association between the students’ perceptions of justice and their attachment to their department and motivation. These findings indicate that students’ perceptions of fairness are of great importance with regard to many variables contributing to the efficacy and productivity of educational and instructional activities, such as improving productive teacher-student communication, and enhancing student attention, motivation and achievement. Therefore the main goal of this study is to determine the perceptions of the university students at the faculty of education about the justice of their educational environment. This study also aims to determine whether students’ perceptions differ according to certain variables including gender, department, and class.

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Method Participants This research is based on its survey design. The population of the study comprised a total number of 3.817 students (F= 1.822, M= 1.955) attending the Faculty of Education at Inönü University during 2007-2008 fall semester. The sample of the study included 430 students selected from all departments and classes using a stratified sampling method (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2005). All of the students in the sample were given the questionnaire. The questionnaires were handed out to and collected from the studnets just before their regular lessons with the permission and help of the instructors, which took about ten minutes. After incomplete and erroneous forms were discarded only 405 forms completed by 195 females and 210 males were considered for analysis. Research Instrument In this study, the Fair Learning Environment Questionnaire (FLEQ) originally developed by Lizzio et al. (2007) was used in order to measure the college students’ perceptions of fairness [distributive, procedural, and interactional] in their learning environment. The FLEQ comprised a total number of 16 items in two subscales: 1) respectful partnership and 2) systemic fairness. The first sub-scale comprised ten items that focused on the quality of interpersonal treatment students were exposed to. This factor also reflects students’ concerns about the transparency, objectivity, and comparative equity of the learning and assessment process. Overall on this sub-scale, “students appear to be describing an environment that evidences both consistent and fair procedure and a mode of staff-student relating that participatively engages them in the life and governance of school” (Lizzio et al., 2007, p. 203). Some sample items include: “Staff members ask students for their ideas on how things could be improved”, “Rules and procedures are applied consistently and fairly to all students”. The systemic justice subscale, on the other hand, comprised six items characterizing an effective and fair academic system as providing quick access to information and consultation, the existence of effective and clearly explained problem solving procedures, and the encouragement of complaints and negative feedback procedures. Overall in this subscale, students appear to be characterizing an effective and fair academic system as providing readily accessible information and advice, effective problem solving procedures and a process of complaints and negative feedback. Some sample items include: “There are effective procedures in place to help students solve their problems”, “There is an effective system in place for making complaints about unfair treatment”. The Turkish adaptation of the scale was conducted by the researchers. Scale Adaptation When adapting the original scale, firstly the items were translated into Turkish using a two-way translation method (first English to Turkish, then Turkish to English). Next this initial scale form was forwarded to experts of English and Turkish languages for evaluation. Following the modifications in line with the experts’ reviews, the form was given to five of the students randomly selected from the sample of the study to test the clarity of the scale. The initial form was developed


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into its final version in line with the experts’ and students’ views. This final version of the scale was administered on one hundred students from twelve different departments in the faculty of education to test the validity and reliability. After incomplete and faulty forms were discarded, a total of eighty-four forms were used in the analysis. After the data were coded in the SPSS software, they were tested for their appropriateness for the factor analysis using Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett tests. The KMO value was found to be “.83” and Bartlett Test of Sphericity value was found to be 465.336 (p=.000), which indicated that the data could undergo factor analysis. The construct validity of the instrument was tested using principal components analysis method, which revealed a two-factor structure with high factor loadings as in the original scale. It was detected, however, that the ninth item had a low factor loading. So, the ninth item was discarded from the scale. Following the elimination of this item, the factor analysis was repeated, which revealed that the scale explains 44.71% of the total variance (35.82% for respectful partnership and 8.89% for systemic justice). Internal consistency coefficients were found “.81” for respectful partnership, “.76” for systemic justice and “.87” for total. These results show that the validity and reliability values of the adopted scale are quite similar to those of the original scale. The item-total correlation coefficients of the scale vary between “.39” and “.75”. The factor loadings, item-total correlations, and mean values of the items are given in the Appendix. Data Analysis In this study, quantitative research methods were used in order to fully investigate the research problems. Student responses to the questionnaire were statistically analysed according to independent variables. A t-test was used for the analysis of the difference between students’ responses to the items by gender, while ANOVA analysis was used to test any difference by the registered department and class, and an LSD test was used to find the sources of differences between groups (Büyüköztürk, 2002, p. 153).

Results The findings of the study are presented and interpreted respectively for each of the independent variables. Findings and Interpretations regarding Gender Variable To find whether there is a significant difference between male and female students’ perceptions of the faculty environment in terms of fairness, a t-test was applied. The findings obtained from the t test are shown in Table 1.

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Table 1 Analysis Results Regarding Gender Variable Scale

Respectful Partnership

Systemic Fairness

Total

Gender

N

Mean

SD

Female

195

23,43

7,38

Male

210

22,78

6,70

Female

195

18,20

5,30

Male

210

16,88

4,99

Female

195

41,64

11,76

Male

210

39,66

10,64

t

p

,935

,350

2,585

,010*

1,770

,076

*p