Measuring Teacher Engagement: Development of the Engaged Teachers Scale (ETS)

Main Article Content

Robert M. Klassen
Sündüs Yerdelen
Tracy L Durksen

Abstract

The goal of this study was to create and validate a brief multi-dimension scale of teacher engagement—the Engaged Teachers Scale (ETS)—that reflects the particular characteristics of teachers’ work in schools. We collected data from four separate samples of teachers (total N = 823), and followed five steps in developing and validating the ETS.  The result of our five steps of analysis was a 16-item, 4-factor scale of teacher engagement that shows evidence of reliability, validity, and usability for further research. The four factors of the ETS consist of: cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, social engagement: students, and social engagement: colleagues. The ETS was found to correlate positively with a frequently used work engagement measure (the UWES) and to be positively related to, but empirically distinct, from a measure of teachers’ self-efficacy. Our key contribution to the measurement of teacher engagement is the novel inclusion of social engagement with students as a key component of overall engagement at work for teachers. We propose that social engagement should be considered in future iterations of work engagement measures in a range of settings.

Article Details

How to Cite
Klassen, R. M., Yerdelen, S., & Durksen, T. L. (2013). Measuring Teacher Engagement: Development of the Engaged Teachers Scale (ETS). Frontline Learning Research, 1(2), 33–52. https://doi.org/10.14786/flr.v1i2.44
Section
Articles
Author Biography

Robert M. Klassen, University of York

Robert Klassen is Professor and Chair in the Psychology in Education Research Centre at the University of York, UK.

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