K–12 Blended Teaching Readiness: Model and Instrument Development

Abstract

An increasing number of K–12 schools have adopted blended learning approaches. Current empirical research has been sparse regarding preparing teachers for blended teaching, including the skills they must develop to teach in blended contexts. This research is focused on that weakness, with the purposes of systematically identifying the skills needed for teaching in a blended learning context and of developing and testing an instrument that can be used to determine individual and school-wide readiness for blended teaching. In this study we present a measurement model used to develop items for measuring K–12 blended learning readiness. Specifically the instrument contained the following top-level areas: (a) foundational knowledge, skills, and dispositions, (b) instructional planning, (c) instructional methods and strategies, (d) assessment and evaluation, and (e) management. Each top-level construct also had two to four subconstructs. Through confirmatory factor analysis using survey responses from 2,290 K–12 teachers we found that the data met all four fit statistics cutoffs set forth in the literature (root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA]= 0.041, comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.926, Tucker–Lewis index [TLI] = 0.923, standardized root mean square residual [SRMR] = 0.041, X2 = 978.934, df = 1992).