Professional Learning Community Assessment-Revised (PLCA-R) questionnaire: translation and validation in Spanish context

The analysis of professional community is a good indicator of the degree of professional and institutional development of a school. The Professional Learning Community Assessment-Revised (PLCA-R) is one of the most internationally-recognised instruments for evaluating professional learning and collegiality in primary and secondary schools. Because there are no instruments in Spanish at this level, it was necessary to adapt this questionnaire to the Spanish context. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to report on the development, translation, adaptation and validation of a Spanish version of the PLCA-R. The final version of the adapted questionnaire, using 'cross-cultural adaptation', was validated based on the analysis of its factorial structure and internal consistency in the Spanish context. The large sample consisted of 814 teachers from preschool, primary and secondary schools supported by public funds. From a statistical point of view, the PLCA-R appears suitable for measuring collegiality in schools as professional communities in the Spanish context. The questionnaire showed both strong factorial validity and internal consistency reliability. This validated version of an internationally-recognised questionnaire can be used to diagnose the status of current conditions of teacher collegiality in schools for further improvement.