Sustainable social justice in early childhood education management: A scale development study

In this research, a scale development study was conducted to determine teacher perceptions regarding the sustainable social justice role of school principals in early childhood education management. The concept of "Sustainable Social Justice" has been tried to be introduced into the field literature. There is a need for knowledge of the concept that explains sustainable social justice in early childhood education management and a scale that measures the concept of sustainable social justice. Within the scope of the study, the relevant literature was reviewed and the concept of social justice, social justice approaches, dimensions of social justice, competencies of school administrators, social justice in education, disadvantages in early childhood education and sustainable social justice in early childhood education management were evaluated. In the research, it was studied first in qualitative and then in quantitative dimensions with the exploratory sequential mixed research method. In the qualitative dimension of the research, the phenomenological pattern was used. For the qualitative dimension, a working group was formed with 8 school administrators determined with maximum diversity. The perceptions of school administrators were revealed with the "School Administrators' Opinions on Social Justice Interview Form". While preparing the interview form, the information of two field experts was consulted. In the analysis of data; content analysis method was used; Categories and codes were revealed about the views of school administrators working in pre-school education institutions regarding sustainable social justice. In the quantitative dimension of the research, a scale development study was carried out with the descriptive scanning method. Teacher perceptions regarding the social justice role of the school principal were determined with the "Sustainable Social Justice Scale" developed in the research. Based on the data obtained from the interviews and literature review, an item pool of 88 questions was prepared for the scale. Items with similar content that were thought to contain more than one meaning were removed under the guidance of experts and 78 items were presented to the opinion of 14 experts (in the fields of educational management, pre-school education, measurement and evaluation and guidance). In line with the feedback of the experts, a draft scale form with 30 items was created. In the quantitative part of the research, the population consists of 261 people. For the pilot application, 68 people were contacted face to face and the draft scale form was applied. However, feedback was received from 52 people, and 2 of the data obtained were removed because one page was missing. As a result, EFA (Explanatory Factor Analysis) was conducted for the draft scale form with the data obtained from 50 people. As a result, items with item loads less than 0.45 were removed. The final step for the scale included 16 items. The scale reliability coefficient (Cronbach Alpha) is 0.96. According to this value, it can be declared that the scale has high reliability. In the main application, the scale link created through the Surveey application was sent to teachers working in pre-school education institutions via online platforms, and responses were received from 213 people. With these data, CFA (Confirmatory Factor Analysis) found that the value of x2 = 225.843 was between 3 and 5, the value of CFI = .957 was between .95-1.0, and the RMSEA value was .092. Accordingly, it can be explained that the model has good fit values. It was explained that teachers' perception levels regarding the concept of sustainable social justice and whether teachers' perception levels differ according to the demographic information in the research scale. According to the results of the research, within the scope of all these issues, the experience of the school principal in ensuring sustainable social justice in early childhood education management and the establishment of a legal basis for sustainable social justice come to the fore. Experience can be a criterion in the appointment of school administrators, and laws and regulations on sustainable social justice can be regulated in schools and at every level of the education and training system. It is thought that studies should be conducted on sustainable social justice, which is a new concept in the literature, and the "Sustainable Social Justice Scale" will contribute to science.