Development and Initial Validation of the Culturally Responsive and Inclusive School Scale-Student Version

The proposed study developed and conducted an initial validation of the Culturally Responsive and Inclusive School Scale-Student Version, a student-report measure for assessing culturally responsive teaching practices. The study occurred over two phases: a conceptualization and item development phase focused on building substantive validity, and an initial validation phase focused on building preliminary structural validity evidence. The item development phase included a systematic literature review on the construct of interest, content validation, and a preliminary pilot of items. The initial validation phase examined the technical adequacy of the scale for use in secondary schools through its internal consistency reliability, exploratory factor analysis, and exploration of its convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity. Partial support for the hypotheses were found. While the CRISS-S demonstrated to be a psychometrically strong measure, the underlying factor structure is not consistent with grounding theory. Additionally, the results of this study did not provide strong evidence for the discriminant validity of the CRISS-S, raising concerns regarding the distinguishability from other school-related constructs. A discussion of the limitations of the measure as well as directions for future research are provided.