TY - JOUR
T1 - Validation of a new scale Evaluating the Personal, Interpersonal and Contextual dimensions of growth through learning – the EPIC scale
AU - Obsuth, Ingrid
AU - Brown, Ruth Harriet
AU - Armstrong, Ruth
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors listed here are those who, in line with our authorship policy, made a significant contribution to this article. We would like to acknowledge the many colleagues with whom we have collaborated in our practice and research, without whose labours this publication would not have been possible, especially: members of the Learning Together team beyond the authors above, including Julia Arnade-Colwill, Claire Bonner, Elizabeth Champion, Gareth Evans, Jenny Fogarty, Lisa Ghiggini, Rebecca Greene, Dr Simon Larmour, Dr Amy Ludlow, Jack Merritt, Dr Victoria Pereyra-Iraola and Izzie Rowbotham; our academic colleagues who have convened Learning Together courses over the last five years; our prison based colleagues who have partnered with us to make this action research possible; Coracle Inside, with whom we developed the digital learning platform allowing students to use this scale to evaluate their own growth through learning; and specific thanks to Dr Simon Larmour, who worked as a research assistant organising the data collection in this validation study and collected data in phase two of our longitudinal study to support the development of our social cohesion scale; Dr Amy Ludlow whose reflections contributed to early versions of this scale and Dr Victoria Pereyra Iraola, who worked with us on the very first exploratory phase of our longitudinal study and collected qualitative data that we analysed to develop the social cohesion scale. We remember especially our dear colleague Jack Merritt, who worked with all of these people to convene Learning Together courses and our dear student Saskia Jones,whom we miss terribly following their untimely deaths in the Fishmongers Hall tragedy of 29.11.19. We are grateful to them and to all our students who have participated in this research and guided us in the development of this scale. We are also grateful to the many people and organisations that have supported Learning Together, especially the University of Cambridge, the British Academy, our anonymous philanthropic donor, Schroder Foundation, Cairns Trust, HEFCE, Rank Foundation, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, Bromley Trust, Simon Davis and the Fishmongers Charitable Trust. The research underpinning this paper was funded by Dr Ruth Armstrong's post-doctoral fellowship with the British Academy (grant RG79627 ) funded by the Journal of Moral Education Trust , and two awards from the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants scheme which supported the further development and testing of this scale as students progressed through and beyond prison and university. Ethical clearance was granted from the National Research Committee ( NRC2015-130 , NRC2016-355 and NRC2018-142 ) and the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge . We are also very grateful to Professor Stephen Farrall for his encouragement of our work and his care and insight in reviewing an earlier draft of this paper and providing very helpful comments. Last but by no means least, we would also like to acknowledge our great appreciation for Dr Luning Sun of The Psychometric Centre at Cambridge Judge Business School for his thorough, thoughtful and timely consultations with us related to the psychometric and analytical aspects of our manuscript.
Funding Information:
The authors listed here are those who, in line with our authorship policy, made a significant contribution to this article. We would like to acknowledge the many colleagues with whom we have collaborated in our practice and research, without whose labours this publication would not have been possible, especially: members of the Learning Together team beyond the authors above, including Julia Arnade-Colwill, Claire Bonner, Elizabeth Champion, Gareth Evans, Jenny Fogarty, Lisa Ghiggini, Rebecca Greene, Dr Simon Larmour, Dr Amy Ludlow, Jack Merritt, Dr Victoria Pereyra-Iraola and Izzie Rowbotham; our academic colleagues who have convened Learning Together courses over the last five years; our prison based colleagues who have partnered with us to make this action research possible; Coracle Inside, with whom we developed the digital learning platform allowing students to use this scale to evaluate their own growth through learning; and specific thanks to Dr Simon Larmour, who worked as a research assistant organising the data collection in this validation study and collected data in phase two of our longitudinal study to support the development of our social cohesion scale; Dr Amy Ludlow whose reflections contributed to early versions of this scale and Dr Victoria Pereyra Iraola, who worked with us on the very first exploratory phase of our longitudinal study and collected qualitative data that we analysed to develop the social cohesion scale. We remember especially our dear colleague Jack Merritt, who worked with all of these people to convene Learning Together courses and our dear student Saskia Jones,whom we miss terribly following their untimely deaths in the Fishmongers Hall tragedy of 29.11.19. We are grateful to them and to all our students who have participated in this research and guided us in the development of this scale. We are also grateful to the many people and organisations that have supported Learning Together, especially the University of Cambridge, the British Academy, our anonymous philanthropic donor, Schroder Foundation, Cairns Trust, HEFCE, Rank Foundation, Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service, Bromley Trust, Simon Davis and the Fishmongers Charitable Trust. The research underpinning this paper was funded by Dr Ruth Armstrong's post-doctoral fellowship with the British Academy (grant RG79627) funded by the Journal of Moral Education Trust, and two awards from the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants scheme which supported the further development and testing of this scale as students progressed through and beyond prison and university. Ethical clearance was granted from the National Research Committee (NRC2015-130, NRC2016-355 and NRC2018-142) and the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. We are also very grateful to Professor Stephen Farrall for his encouragement of our work and his care and insight in reviewing an earlier draft of this paper and providing very helpful comments. Last but by no means least, we would also like to acknowledge our great appreciation for Dr Luning Sun of The Psychometric Centre at Cambridge Judge Business School for his thorough, thoughtful and timely consultations with us related to the psychometric and analytical aspects of our manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors
PY - 2022/9
Y1 - 2022/9
N2 - Learning Together (LT) is a co-educational programme that brings prison- and university-based students together to study in ways that encourage growth via transformative learning. Interviews with participating students identified six core factors that they believed LT fosters: self-efficacy, interpersonal-efficacy, self-esteem, perspective-taking, future orientation, and social cohesion. The current study aimed to validate a new scale Evaluating the Personal, Interpersonal, and Contextual dimensions of growth through LT (the EPIC scale) to assesses all of them concurrently. University students (N = 852) completed the EPIC scale, the questionnaires from which it was adapted, and additional measures to ascertain construct, convergent and discriminant validity. Analyses identified seven-factors, where self-efficacy parsed into ‘Perseverance’ and ‘Drive’. Each of the factors showed relations with the original and related measures. The EPIC scale is a psychometrically sound assessment tool that may be reliably used to track the personal development of students across their participation in learning programmes, including LT.
AB - Learning Together (LT) is a co-educational programme that brings prison- and university-based students together to study in ways that encourage growth via transformative learning. Interviews with participating students identified six core factors that they believed LT fosters: self-efficacy, interpersonal-efficacy, self-esteem, perspective-taking, future orientation, and social cohesion. The current study aimed to validate a new scale Evaluating the Personal, Interpersonal, and Contextual dimensions of growth through LT (the EPIC scale) to assesses all of them concurrently. University students (N = 852) completed the EPIC scale, the questionnaires from which it was adapted, and additional measures to ascertain construct, convergent and discriminant validity. Analyses identified seven-factors, where self-efficacy parsed into ‘Perseverance’ and ‘Drive’. Each of the factors showed relations with the original and related measures. The EPIC scale is a psychometrically sound assessment tool that may be reliably used to track the personal development of students across their participation in learning programmes, including LT.
KW - Learning Together
KW - transformative learning
KW - measure development
KW - psychometric properties
U2 - 10.1016/j.stueduc.2022.101154
DO - 10.1016/j.stueduc.2022.101154
M3 - Article
SN - 0191-491X
VL - 74
JO - Studies in Educational Evaluation
JF - Studies in Educational Evaluation
M1 - 101154
ER -