Adaptation of the Concerns About Inclusive Education Scale Short Form (CIES-SF) into Turkish

Abstract

ABSTRACT One of the factors that affect inclusion is teachers’ concerns about it. Teachers may believe that they will not be successful in inclusion due to the concerns they have experienced. Therefore, understanding teachers’ concerns about inclusion plays a critical role in achieving the purpose of education. This research aimed to adapt The Concerns about Inclusive Education Scale Short Form (CIES-SF) into Turkish, which was converted into a shorter version by Lozano et al. (2022). The study participants consisted of 650 teachers. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to establish construct validity of the scale, while confirmatory factor analysis was used to confirm its structure. The reliability coefficient for the entire scale, as measured by the Cronbach alpha, was calculated to be .87. The results of confirmatory factor analysis revealed favourable goodness of fit indices, withχ2 = 129.91, df = 50, χ2/df = 2.59, p < .001, RMSEA=.070, SRMR=.062, NNFI=.93, CFI=.94, GFI=.92, AGFI=.88. The Concerns About Inclusive Education Scale Short Form (CIES-SF) is a reliable tool that can be administered quickly to assess teachers’ concerns about inclusion. This valuable tool can be utilised by researchers, particularly teacher trainers, to better understand teachers’ concerns related to inclusive education practices.