A Measure of Early Childhood Educators' Teaching Styles

Assessing teaching styles with a valid and reliable instrument would assist in the measurement of an important variable that affects children's socio-emotional and cognitive development. Evaluation of teaching style in the early childhood classroom is difficult, as collecting data from the early childhood classroom often lies in the reliance on second-party reports (typically students or administrators) or lengthy, in-person observations. The purpose of the current study was to develop a self-report questionnaire for teachers in preschool through 3rd grade for use when systematic observations of teachers are unfeasible, students may be too young for a student report measure, or researchers wish to use multiple measures of teaching styles. A convenience sampling approach was used to recruit in-service (certified) and pre-service teachers (college students preparing to become teachers) in the Central Plains region. The researchers developed the initial items used to create the Teaching Styles Questionnaire (TSQ) as a modification of the 60 most relevant items from the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ; Robinson et. al, 1995). We used factor analyses to explore potential subscales and test the convergent validity of the Teaching Styles Questionnaire subscales. By using factor analyses, long and short versions of the Teaching Styles Questionnaire were developed, consisting of 27 and 16 items respectively. The model fit indices indicated both versions of the Teaching Styles Questionnaire have a good model fit. Criterion-related validity was supported by correlations with the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001). Limitations to this study are discussed.