A revalidation of the school participant empowerment scale amongst science and mathematics teachers

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explore the validity and reliability of the School Participant Empowerment Scale amongst science and mathematics teachers. Using a sample of 257 elementary and secondary teachers, the study used exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to examine the validity of the instrument. We began by trying to confirm the hypothesised structure using confirmatory factor analysis, but were unable to do so. A subsequent exploratory factor analysis produced a structure that differed somewhat from the original structure. A six-factor solution emerged, but the items loaded differently than the original structure. We have named the emergent factors: “Self-efficacy”, “Decision-making autonomy”, “Professionalism”, “Scheduling autonomy”, “Influence” and “Authority”. The results raise questions about the scale for measuring empowerment amongst science and mathematics teachers. Future work should seek to replicate our findings with a larger sample and consider developing items relating to professional knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher empowerment
• teacher leadership
• science teachers
• mathematics teachers
• factor analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/.

2. UTeach is a teacher preparation programme that recruits undergraduates science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors into teaching. The programme provides them with pedagogical preparation, but also places a great deal of emphasis on content knowledge. UTeach participants graduate with a STEM degree and a state certification in secondary mathematics or science.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Virginia Snodgrass Rangel

Virginia Snodgrass Rangel, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Houston, where she teaches courses on program evaluation, research design, and quantitative research methods. Her research interests include STEM education, re-entry of justice-involved youth, policy implementation and evaluation, and program evaluation. Her work has appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, Review of Educational Research, the Journal of School Leadership, and School Effectiveness and School Improvement.

Milijana Suskavcevic

Dr. Milijana Suskavcevic has served as internal evaluator for a major federally-funded grant for infusion technology into physics classrooms, has been physics faculty at the University of Texas at El Paso, STEM education researcher/evaluator for the Rice University STEM programs, Research faculty at the University of Houston, and a Fulbright Scholar – in teaching/research capacity at the University of Montenegro. Her research interests include teacher preparation and development in STEM. She currently teaches AP Physics courses.

Andrew Kapral

Andrew Kapral is the Director of the STEM Teaching Equity Project at the University of Houston and a Ph.D. student in the Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies Program at UH. He taught elementary science in Houston before making the change to work in professional development for science and math teachers. His research focuses on teacher preparation.

Wallace Dominey

Dr. Wallace Dominey is a Neurobiologist by training who began to work in K-12 science education in 1997. Since then, Dr. Dominey has developed programs of systemic change in science education for Houston area school districts. These programs include Aldine ISD’s campus-based science specialist program, the Rice University Elementary Model Science Lab program, and the Science Teaching Equity Project. Dr. Dominey also directed the University of Houston Regional Collaborative for Excellence in Science Teaching and served as 2007-08 and 2008-09 president of MATS, the Metropolitan Association of Teachers of Science.