A French adaptation of the Compassionate Love Scale for teachers: Validation on a sample of teachers and correlation with teacher autonomous motivation

Abstract

Despite the abundant literature on teacher-student relationships teacher emotional involvement has not been much studied. The social psychological concept of compassionate love describes a type of love that occurs in many relationships and some relational jobs. It can be measured using Sprecher and Fehr's (2005) Compassionate Love Scale (CLS). The first aim of our study was to translate into French and adapt the Compassionate Love Scale for teachers and to determine the metrological qualities of the translated scale, especially factor structure. The present research provided the first test of the scale's temporal stability. The second aim was to evaluate the relation between compassionate love and teacher autonomous motivation. Data were collected via an online questionnaire. In contrast to the one-factor solution provided by previous validation studies, our exploratory factor analyses revealed a two-factor solution (sensibility and sacrifice), which points out the need for further studies. The internal consistency is excellent and its test-retest reliability is good. The French scale for teachers is correlated with empathic concern and spirituality measures, and predicts teacher autonomous motivation. Our study was the first to apply the CLS to teacher-student relationships, thereby opening up new research perspectives.