Adaptation of teaching approaches scale to the Kosovo culture - a validity and reliability analysis

Abstract

Investigating the teaching approaches that teachers adopt in the education process has gained significant importance. Various scales have been developed to determine teachers' teaching approaches. Cultural differences may cause the scales to yield different results. Therefore, adapting the scales to different cultures contributes to the use of such scales by those cultures. Accordingly, the Teaching Approaches Scale developed by Michael Prosser and KeithTrigwell (2006), which was adapted into Turkish by Tezci (2017), was adapted to the Kosovo culture. In the present study, whether the Albanian, Bosnian and Turkish versions of the scale support the same factor structure was investigated using the quantitative research method. Firstly, the Teaching Approaches Scale was translated into Albanian and Bosnian and the opinion of an expert was taken. The scale was applied to 200 teachers working in schools where the teaching languages are Albanian, Bosnian and Turkish. The scale comprised 22 items and 2 factors. The present study was carried out in Kosovo, therefore linguistic equivalence was particularly prioritized. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was utilized to confirm the suitability of the two-factor structure of the scale. Analyzes were carried out separately for each language and acceptable fit indices were determined. The reliability analysis yielded satisfactory results.