The Perceived Teacher's Competency Scale for teaching students with special educational needs: The development and validation of a scale to assess students' perspectives of their teachers

Abstract

This research was carried out to develop a reliable and valid instrument for assessing teachers' professional competence and skills from the perspective of students with special educational needs. Initially, a pool of 45 statements was generated to collect pupils' perceptions and use their ratings to measure teachers' pedagogical skills. These items were categorised into six dimensions or categories of perceived teacher competence, which were determined based on factors identified through exploratory factor analysis. These six dimensions are as follows: teaching strategies and skills, expository teaching, encouraging independent thinking, probing-inquiry style of teaching, communication skills and teacher openness. Standardisation of the scale was completed with 209 students with special educational needs, in the 12–15 age group, studying in grades 6 to 12 in various special and inclusive schools. The sample was taken using multistage random sampling. Four statements were rejected based on the Content Validity Index (CVI), and 41 statements were retained for further analysis. The calculated scale-level CVI (S-CVI)/Ave for 41 statements is 0.93. Item analysis was performed by calculating each statement's corrected item correlation value; two items were eliminated, and 39 items were retained. Finally, exploratory factor analysis was applied, and six factors were generated, explaining 53.88% of the total variance. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the final Perceived Teacher's Competency Scale, consisting of 29 items, was 0.83. The findings of the present study suggest that the Perceived Teacher's Competency Scale may be helpful in future research to measure a teacher's teaching skills using student ratings. Further, the results indicate that the Perceived Teacher's Competency Scale is reliable and valid. The Perceived Teacher's Competency Scale would benefit teachers and various stakeholders (such as school administration and government) by allowing them to assess students' perspectives on teachers' professional skills. Further, the ratings given by students can be used as feedback by teachers to improve their teaching skills and make teaching and learning experiences more compelling.