Refining the Value Orientation Inventory

Educational value orientations reflect teachers' philosophical beliefs about schooling and serveas the basis on which teachers make their decisions. Five value orientations have been identifiedempirically among physical educators: disciplinary mastery (DM), learning process (LP), selfactualization (SA), ecological integration (EI), and social responsibility (SR) (Ennis & Chen,1993). The Ennis Value Orientation Inventory (EnnisVOI) was designed and used in valueorientation research to elicit physical educators' educational values by having teachers prioritizea set of curricular decisions. The original inventory (VOI-1) (Ennis & Hooper, 1988) consistedof 75 decision statements organized into 15 five-statement sets. Each statement in a setrepresented one value orientation. In testing, teachers first read and consider statements in a set.Then, they rank the five statements using a different number on a 5-point scale (in which 1 =least important and 5 = most important) to indicate their value priority. Teachers' valueorientations emerge when they consistently rank the statements representing one particular valueorientation higher than others throughout the 15 sets.