STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF UNIVERSITY TEACHERS’ INSTRUCTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: A GENDER AND INSTITUTIONAL-SECTOR COMPARISON IN KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA, PAKISTAN

Abstract

This study focused on measuring university students’ perceptions regarding the instructional intelligence of their lecturers in two universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan: public and private, and checked whether there was any difference in the perception based on the institutional-sector and gender. The theoretical foundation of the concept of Instructional Intelligence was based on Bennett’s (2010) instructional-intelligence framework and Tomlinson’s (2001) theory of differentiated instruction. The construct of instructional intelligence was evaluated through a 30-item Likert-scale questionnaire that assessed six sub-constructs (KMO = .897, Bartlett’s χ² (435) = 7991.42, p < .001; Cronbach's α = .936). A total number of 400 students (250 from public, 150 from private) were used through multistage stratified random sampling. The statistical analysis of data was done in SPSS through descriptive statistics and independent-samples t-tests. The overall mean instructional intelligence score was 73.49 (SD = 25.11) indicating a below-neutral, moderately unfavorable perception. The mean scores of the public sector learners were slightly higher (M = 78.54) compared to the private sector learners’ mean score (M = 71.81), but the difference was not significant statistically,          t (398) = .672, p = .502, d ≈ 0.28. Gender did not prove significant either (male M = 72.68; female M = 73.28; t (398) = -0.24, p = .808). The findings pointed out toward the need for a universal competency-based approach in professional development training for all teachers and with classroom management as a focus area. The implications of these findings are relevant to both teacher trainers and quality assurance policies within the higher education in Pakistan.