Development of the Distributed Leadership Practice for Inclusive Education (DLPIE) Scale

Abstract

Inclusive education reform is a continuous process and it requires all the members of a school community to accept that not all children are ready to learn the same thing in the same manner at the same time. Members of a school community also need to act jointly to enhance the schooling system to ensure the educational rights of all the children. This paper reports on a study that aims to develop a scale named Distributed Leadership Practice for Inclusive Education (DLPIE). The purpose of DLPIE scale is to measure the distributed leadership practices at regular schools for inclusive education. A two-stage cluster sampling method was applied to identify a sample of 673 primary school teachers including head teachers to participate in this study. The study indicates that the DLPIE scale successfully meets the standards for reliability. Factor analysis was also conducted to identify the possible factors in the scale. The results of the present study provide the final scale that consists of 20 items. It also provides preliminary evidence to further use of this instrument for the purpose of measuring leadership practice for inclusion in regular schools.