The development of the Teachers’ Attitudes toward Career Learning Index (TACLI)

Abstract

Teachers play an important role supporting young people to form their career identities and to make successful transitions into further learning and work. In England, there has been limited research that has looked specifically at the role of teachers and none of which has tried to establish a measure of teacher attitude toward careers work. This article details the development of the Teachers’ Attitudes toward Career Learning Index, which was created to measure attitudes and engagement in career learning on teachers in England. The instrument went through a survey design process which included content validity and construct validity components. The process identified five underlying factors in teachers’ attitude and engagement in careers work: (1) career learning and support practices, (2) school career strategy attitudes, (3) subject career learning attitudes, (4) career support attitudes, and (5) school career strategy practices. This process helped refined initial theoretical constructs regarding teachers’ roles in careers learning.

Keywords:

• Teacher attitudes
• career education
• instrument development
• career learning
• principal component analysis

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all those that helped with the process of instrument development including the teachers that took part in the pilot study.