Identifying and Prioritizing the Explanatory Components of Research-Oriented School with the Aim of Improving the Quality of the Teaching-Learning Process

Abstract

Background and Aim: A research-oriented school can improve the quality of the teaching-learning process. Therefore, the purpose of this study was identifying and prioritizing the explanatory components of research-oriented school with the aim of improving the quality of the teaching-learning process. Methods: This study in terms of purpose was applied and in terms of implementation method was cross-sectional. The research population was the teachers of all educational levels of Mazandaran province in the 2022-2023 academic years, which based on the Cochran formula numbers of 380 people of them were selected as a sample with using multistep cluster sampling methods with respect to the ratio of the size of townships. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire with 118 items in 24 components. Data were analyzed by exploratory factor analysis and Friedman test in SPSS software. Results: The results of the exploratory factor analysis showed that the factor loading of all items was higher than 0.40 and the research-oriented school with the aim of improving the quality of the teaching-learning process had 24 components in 11 dimensions, which the factor loading and average variance extracted of all of them were higher than 0.50 and Cronbach and combination reliability of all of them were higher than 0.70. The results of the Friedman test showed that in the research-oriented school with the aim of improving the quality of the teaching-learning process respectively the components of social consequences, scientific and research workshops and festivals, motivational incentives, educational system consequences, forward-looking thinking to research, individual consequences, human resource empowerment, developmental attitude to research and education, academic consequences, upstream policies, creativity-oriented and intellectual orientation of education, religious and national values, creation of research-oriented environment, weakness of education-oriented system, educational contents, dissemination of research-oriented culture, necessity of research-oriented in education, curriculum, facilities and infrastructures, leadership of educational system managers, motivation of students, fostering of critical spirit and problem solving, material and non-material support and research-based evaluation had a higher priority. Conclusion: Considering the identification of the explanatory components of research-oriented school with the aim of improving the quality of the teaching-learning process and prioritizing them, can be taken effective step to improve the research-oriented school through the components with higher priority.