Development and Validation of the School Leader Empowering Behaviours (SLEB) Scale

Abstract

Despite a growing interest in using empowerment as a leadership strategy to enhance teachers’ work motivation to play a more central role in educational change, there is still limited research on how leaders in school organisations empower teachers. One possible reason might be due to the lack of relevant measures for assessing empowering behaviours of leaders in the educational contexts. This study developed and validated the School Leader Empowering Behaviours (SLEB) scale in the Singapore educational context. A convenience sample of 304 teachers from the Singapore schools participated in the study. The sample was randomly split into two sub-samples, Sample 1 (N = 142) and Sample 2 (N = 162). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted in Sample 1 to determine the number of factors and select the items. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted in Sample 2 for cross-validation to confirm the factorial structure of the scale and examine the model-data fit. Results from both EFA and CFA provided support for a seven-factor SLEB scale as well as a higher order factor structure. Each sub-scale of the SLEB showed good internal consistency reliability and predictive validity. The potential uses of the SLEB scale were also discussed.