An education for sustainable development self-efficacy scale for primary pre-service teachers: construction and validation

Abstract

A scale was developed to assess primary school Teachers’ Self-Efficacy on Education for Sustainable Development (TSESESD). It includes four domains of competences: values and ethics, systems thinking, emotions and feelings, and actions. The scale development is consistent with key principles of educational and social psychology research. Nine hundred twenty-four (924) primary education student teachers and 88 in-service primary teachers participated in the study. Findings demonstrated that TSESESD has good psychometric properties, strong validity and reliability scores, adequate internal consistency (Cronbach α = 0.97), and satisfactory mean inter-correlation of items within domains (M = 0.78). TSESESD is considered a reliable instrument for teacher preparation programs aiming to develop primary school teachers’ self-efficacy in ESD.

Keywords:

• education for sustainable development
• pre-service teachers
• self-efficacy scale

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to cordially thank the anonymous consulting editors for their constructive comments and suggestions that significantly contributed to the improvement of the article.