The Adaptation and Psychometric Analysis of the Global Transformational Leadership (GTL) Scale for Turkish Educational Institutions

Effective leadership is essential in transforming schools into vibrant learning environments that foster teachers' professional growth and boost student achievement. Among various leadership styles, transformational leadership, with its emphasis on vision, support, and innovation, stands out due to its potential to maximize performance and foster school success. The objective of this research is to translate and culturally adapt the Global Transformational Leadership Scale (GTL) by Carless et al. (2000) into Turkish, with a focus on its application in educational institutions. The adaptation process followed a rigorous methodology to ensure the scale's semantic and conceptual equivalence in Turkish culture. This process involved translation, back-translation, and revisions based on expert feedback. The research was conducted with a sample of 322 teachers from a mid-sized city in eastern Türkiye, and data collection took place in three phases: linguistic equivalence testing with English teachers, parallel testing with the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and other relevant scales, and test-retest reliability analysis. CFA was performed to verify the scale's factor structure, and various validity and reliability measures were assessed, including convergent validity, nomological validity, and measurement invariance across gender, education level, and tenure. The results indicated that the adapted GTL scale is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring transformational leadership in Turkish educational institutions.