Validity and Reliability of an Evaluation Instrument for English Curriculum System in Chinese Vocational Higher Education Institutions

The English curriculum is the basic part of the curriculum system of vocational higher education institutions (VHEIs) in China, and it is the public compulsory curriculum that students of all majors must study. It not only cultivates students' ability to learn and apply English but also lays an English foundation for students' future further learning and lifelong development. The purpose of this study is to validate the evaluation instrument for English curriculum system. This is a quantitative research and the questionnaire has adapted from previous scholars. A stratified random sampling technique has been employed to select 350 English lecturers from a total of 864 English lecturers at 20 vocational HEIs in Shandong Province, China. The results showed: ⅰ) Each dimension Clonbach alpha coefficient and McDonald’s omega (Composite reliability) are more than 0.70. ⅱ) For the convergent validity, each item factor loading > 0.5, each dimension AVE >0.5. ⅲ) For the discriminant validity, the square root of the AVE of the five dimensions is greater than the corresponding correlation coefficients between the two dimensions. ⅳ) Measurement model meet the fit indices, that CMIN χ2=411.228, with degrees of freedom (df) 314, CMIN/df=1.310 (1-3), CFI=0.979 (>0.9), GFI=0.916 (>0.9), NFI=0.916 (>0.9), and RMSEA=0.031(<0.08). The results prove that this English curriculum implementation instrument has good validity and reliability. The instrument can measure the level of English curriculum systems in VHEIs in Shandong Province, China. The research findings showed there were five dimensions in the evaluation of English curriculum system. The research can be used as the basis for evaluation curriculum system for other researchers and education administrators.