Development and validation of the language teachers' adaptive thinking scale

Abstract

Teacher adaptability is an emerging construct in research related to teacher classroom behaviours. Evidence suggests that effective teachers regulate and control their classroom thoughts and actions and they thoughtfully adapt in response to the complex and unanticipated complications that arise. Most of the research on the concept of adaptability has been on adaptive behavior and performance and the body of knowledge lacks empirical research on adaptive thinking. Accordingly, the present research was an attempt to develop and validate an English Teachers’ Adaptive thinking Scale (ELT-ATS) to help researchers and stakeholders measure adaptive thinking of language teachers. To develop the scale, at the first phase of the study the literature was reviewed for the conceptualization of the model. Fifty-five items were extracted in a pool to be evaluated for face and content validity. Based on the views of the expert evaluators some items were merged or modified and finally 39 items remained. At the second phase, the scale was administered to 232 language teachers. Construct validity was conducted through exploratory factor analysis. In addition, discrimination level and level of serving were determined together with test-retest reliability analysis. Seven sub-constructs were found for the 25 remaining items as flexibility, positive creativity, problem-solving, analytical thinking, functional decision making, self-awareness, and self-control. The results showed that the final scale was valid and reliable.