Development and Validation of Teacher Disposition Scale among Student-Teachers in Selected Public Tertiary Institutions

Abstract

The study developed a Teacher Disposition Scale (TDS) and determined the reliability of the scale. It estimated the validity of the scale and investigated the factor structure. There was a dearth of studies in Nigeria that have provided insight into to providing information on items that should be appropriate to measure the disposition of students-teachers towards the teaching profession. Hence, this study addresses this gap in literature. The study adopted the cross-sectional and descriptive design method. Information was sourced from a total sample size of 600 respondents from four purposefully selected public tertiary institutions in Osun, Nigeria. The adopted the simple random technique in the selection of respondents. The research instruments used were Teacher Disposition Scale (TDS) and Teachers Effectiveness Scale (TES). The results showed that the reliability of the TDS using Cronbach’s alpha was r=0.908 (p<0.05) Spearman Brown r=0.838 (p<0.05) and Guttmann Coefficient r=0.824 (p<0.05). The results further showed that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkins (KMO) was 0.778, an indication that the items were suitable for exploratory factor analysis with convergent validity of 0.783 (p<0.05). Also, the items when subjected to Principal Component Analysis (PCA), yielded six components with Eigen values greater than one at 71.7% of the total scale variance. The study concluded that the TDS developed in this study was a valid and reliable instrument that could adequately measure the disposition of secondary school teachers towards the teaching profession in Osun State, and could serve as an important component in teacher preparation, performance and recruitment.