Development of 21st century teaching skills competence perception scale for preschool teachers: Validity and reliability study

This study aims to develop a scale to determine the 21st century teaching skills of preschool teachers. In line with this purpose, first of all, based on the premise that "teachers who will raise students equipped with different skills of the 21st century should also have the skills attributed to them", the competencies that a preschool teacher should have in the 21st century were tried to be determined on the basis of five theoretical bases accepted in national and international literature. This study is in the category of non-experimental design within the quantitative research design. The study group consisted of 660 preschool teachers working in public or private schools affiliated to Izmir Provincial Directorate of National Education; 10 teachers for pilot application, 359 teachers for Exploratory Factor Analysis, and 291 teachers for Confirmatory Factor Analysis. In order to reveal the construct validity of the developed scale, data were collected gradually from two different sample groups at different time periods and EFA and CFA were conducted on these data sets. SPSS 23 and AMOS package programs were used to analyze the data to reveal the factor structure of the scale. Cronbach's Alpha value was 0.935, Guttmann-Split Half value was 0.878 and Spearman-Brown reliability value was 0.896. As a result of the research, the "21st Century Instructional Skills Competencies Scale for Preschool Teachers" consisting of seven dimensions and 29 items with proven validity and reliability was developed. This study is the first scale development study to determine the 21st century teaching skills of preschool teachers in national and international literature. Keywords: 21st century teaching skills, competence, scale development, EFA, CFA