The Validity and Reliability Study of the Teacher Autonomy Scale

This research aimed to develop a Teacher Autonomy Scale (TAS) to determine teachers' perception levels of autonomy. This study aimed to create a measurement tool that can measure teachers' educational and teaching duties and management duties in a single dimension. TAS was applied to teachers at different branches working in the Küçükçekmece District of Istanbul Province in the 2023-24 academic year, and the analysis phase was conducted using the collected data. The participants of the study were selected according to the convenience sampling method. The trial form of the 28-item scale was applied to 201 teachers. The item pool was examined by three measurement and evaluation experts, three teachers, three school administrators, a Turkish language expert, and a 28-item trial form of the scale was created. The trial form of the scale was created as a five-point Likert-type rating scale with response options of strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, and strongly disagree. A preliminary application study was conducted with 40 teachers working in different branches. As a result of the trial application, the final version of the scale, consisting of 15 items, was obtained with expert opinions. The reliability and validity studies were carried out on the remaining 198 teachers. As a result of exploratory factor analysis (EFA), a single-factor structure consisting of 15 items was obtained, and the unidimensional factor explains a total variance of 57.896%. Then, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted with a different sample of 348 teachers to test the structure revealed by EFA. All factor loadings in the CFA model were determined to be statistically significant (p<.05). Fit indices calculated with CFA show that the scale is valid and reliable enough to be used for different sample groups. The factor structure of the TAS was confirmed as one factor named ‘Teachers' autonomy within the classroom and school’. As a result of the reliability analysis of the final form of the scale, the alpha coefficient was found to be .89.