Curriculum Leadership in Higher Education: A Scale Development Research

It had been determined that the Curriculum Leadership Scale, which was rated in five-point likert type, consisted of 150 items and a single dimension in order to examine the curriculum leadership level of lecturers, who were considered to play a strategic role in the curriculum development (design, evaluation and revision) process with a transparent leadership approach based on common sense, taking into account the “volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity” (VUCA world) in the higher education ecosystem. While determining the research group, lecturers who undertook administrative duties at any time in their careers were reached by applying the purposive sampling method. As a result of the data analysis, when the exploratory factor analysis findings were examined, it was observed that a 31-factor structure with an eigenvalue greater than one emerged. Even though there were studies suggesting that there were various dimensions of curriculum leadership in the relevant literature, considering that a complete distinction could not be made between the dimensions due to the intertwining of these dimensions, the first and second eigenvalue ratio were also examined in this study. As a matter of fact, it was concluded that a unidimensional structure emerged since the first and second eigenvalue ratios were greater than three. Considering that unidimensionality was divided into two categories as essential and strict, it was assumed that the scale structure was suitable for essential unidimensionality due to the presence of secondary minor factors with eigenvalues greater than one in this scale. It was found that this unidimension structure explained 45.312% of the total variance. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the unidimension structure of the scale, and as a result of the data analysis, it was determined that the fit indices (GFI=.88, AGFI=.89, CFI=.96 and RMSEA=.06) were within the acceptable range. In addition, due to the high number of items in the scale, Rasch analysis was utilised and it was concluded that model-data fit was ensured. On the other hand, the Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient, which was calculated to determine the scale reliability, was found to be 0.951. As a result, the validity and reliability values of the Curriculum Leadership Scale were found to be at a high level, and the findings revealed that this scale, which was the first measurement tool to determine the curriculum leadership level of the lecturers, was a valid and reliable tool for determining the curriculum leadership level of the lecturers.