Developing and validating three measures of possible language teacher selves

Abstract

This study aimed to develop and validate three measures of Possible Language Teacher Selves: Ideal Language Teacher Self (visions of who a teacher desires to become), Feared Language Teacher Self (who a teacher is afraid of becoming), and Ought-to Language Teacher Self (who significant others expect a teacher to become). To this end, an initial pool of items was prepared based on a review of the related literature and interviews with a group of participants. Through exploratory factor analysis, items for each scale were selected and were further corroborated by confirmatory factor analysis. The internal reliability and content, discriminant, and convergent validity indices were also ascertained in the validation process. The results suggest that the developed scales are reliable and valid measures of language teachers’ possible selves.