The design process of a questionnaire measuring teachers’ innovative behavior

Abstract

Teachers’ Innovative Behavior (TIB) is increasingly important for today’s education. However, available instruments do not meet the complexity of TIB as an individual, collective, planned and unplanned construct. The aim of the present study was to construct a new instrument that meets the requirements of this complexity. We started with a compilation of the most suitable items from 12 existing questionnaires, selected by experts. After determining the most appropriate items, face-validity was investigated by interviewing primary and secondary school teachers concerning essential terminology. Lastly, with a sample of 178 primary and 159 secondary school teachers, we preliminary assessed the dimensionality of the questionnaire by means of an explorative factor analysis (EFA). The results show that the new questionnaire appears face-valid and structurally solid, but still needs to be tested in practice among large groups of teachers, in order to confirm dimensionality and other forms of validity.

Keywords:

• Innovative behavior
• questionnaire development
• collective
• teacher
• team

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Eric Robbers, Maartje van der Lek (MSc), Maud Goedemans (MSc) and Antonie Rozema (MSc) for their assistance with the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2023.2283641.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefan Robbers

Stefan Robbers, MSc, is a Phd student at the faculty of educational sciences at the open university (OU) of the Netherlands. After several years of working as a teacher in secondary education, he started a PhD project on innovative behavior of teachers. During the years of his PhD, he developed an interest in collective learning, social network analysis, and review studies. In addition, he was involved as a teacher in the Master’s in Educational Sciences at the Open University of the Netherlands.

Arnoud Evers

Arnoud Evers, PhD, is assistant professor at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the Open University (OU) of the Netherlands. He is visiting scholar at the Teaching Systems Lab (TSL) group of MIT (Cambridge, Massachusetts). He has also previously been Board Member of the European Association for Practitioner Research on Improving Learning (EAPRIL). His main research areas are: teachers’ learning at work, innovative schools and behavior and HRD. He published, among others, in Review of Educational Research, Human Resource Development Review, European Journal of Training and Development, Studies in Continuing Education, and Vocations and Learning.

Marjan Vermeulen

Marjan Vermeulen, Prof, is professor at the faculty of Educational science of the Open University of the Netherlands. Her professorship is funded by teacher education institute ‘De Kempel’ and education advice organization ‘Onderwijs maak je samen’ (Education is made together). Her expertise lies in supporting educational practice as well as educational research in the field of professional development and innovative behavior of teachers, the school as organization of work for teachers and school leadership, educational development and innovation.