Developing the Educational Belief Scale: The Validity and Reliability Study

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable scale that can be used in determining educational beliefs of teachers and prospective teachers. After studies such as scale expert views and the evaluation of intelligibility, the measure is administered to a sample consisting of 154 teachers and 305 prospective teachers with a total number of 459 participants. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are applied in order to determine the construct validity of the scale. According to the exploratory factor analysis results, the scale consists of five factors including: Perennialism, Essentialism, Progressivism, Reconstructionalism, and Existentionalism with a total of 40 five-Likert type items. Item factor loadings in the related scale range from 0.42 to 0.74, corrected item-total correlations between 0.22 and 0.90, and reliability coefficients between 0.70 and 0.91. Also, the five-factor construct of the scale is confirmed by exploratory factor analysis. The research findings have showed that the Educational Belief Scale is a valid and reliable scale that can be used in determining educational beliefs of teachers and prospective teachers.