Investigation of Psychometric Properties of the Turkish Version of the Motivation to Lead Scale on Teachers

Abstract

Leadership in schools is undergoing a transformation involving all school personnel, especially for teachers. Teachers constitute the basic human resource of both school principals and teacher leadership with their formal and informal leadership roles. However, understanding the emergence of a teacher as a leader and interpreting the motivational processes behind leadership tendencies continues to be an equation with many unknowns in the leadership literature. To identify teachers who are motivated to lead in the field of school leadership; help develop a pool of potential leaders for schools; In order to increase leader effectiveness and organizational performance, it is important to investigate the factors that motivate talented teachers to take leadership roles. For these reasons, in the present study, the psychometric properties of Chan and Drasgow's (2001) "Leadership Motivation Scale" (LEMS), which combines various factors in leadership, on teachers were examined. The study was carried out with teachers working in different school types in Ankara. The psychometric properties of MTLS were primarily examined in terms of content validity and language equivalence. Evidence for the construct validity of the scale was provided by EFA (n: 304), and CFA (n: 500). Research results are “social-normative MTL”; “affective-identity MTL” and, “non-calculative MTL” supported the three-factor structure of MTL. In addition, testing the psychometric properties of MTLS on the teacher group is a first step in the related literature. In this context, it is expected that the research will provide a different perspective to both comparative research in the MTL literature and new research on school leadership. Keywords: Motivation to lead; validity and reliability; individual differences; leadership