Clasroom teachers' attitudes to the virtual clasroom enviroment: Scale devolopment study

As a result of the contribution of the developing technology to distance education,its important to know clasroom teacher's thoughts and feelings about the virtual environments, in order to carry out an effective educational activity to increase the efficiency of the lessons, the student succes, teacher motivation and enabling teachers to gain possitive attitudes towards these environments. For this reason, the aim of this research is to develop a scale that can be used to determine the attitudes of clasroom teachers towards the virtual clasroom environment. The research was prepared by using the survey model. The study group of the research consists of 517 classroom teachers working in public schools in Maltepe district of Istanbul in the 2022-2023 academic year. In the research; the attitudes of classroom tchers towards the virtual classroom environment scale created by the researcher and the "Personal Information Form" to determine the personel information of the teachers were used. During the development phase of the scale, an article pool consisting of 69 articles was created. Items containing similar statements were eliminated and 43 items were submitted to expert view. The scope validity study of the scale was carried out by analyzing expert views. Then, structure validity and reliability analyzes were made. The data obtained in the research were analyzed using SPSS 24.0 and MPlus 7.0 programs. Of the 517 data obtained, 370 data were used for exploratory and 147 data were used for confirmatory factor analysis. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value was calculated in the first step in deciding whether the sample size is sufficient to determine the construct validity of the scale. KMO value was calculated as 0.911, Barlett test 6143 (p<0.001) and it was concluded that the data were suitable for analysis. After that, by applying Exploratory Factor Analysis to the 36-article draft scale, a 22-article scale consisting of 3 factors was developed. The compatibility of this determined factor structure was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. Consistency indices were calculated as χ2/df=1.770, SRMR=0.59, TLI=0.883, CFI=0.900, RMSEA=0.072 and it was concluded that the model was compatible with the data. The Cronbach Alpha value for the reliability of the scale was calculated as 0.905. According to the results of the analysis in the research,Scale of Classroom Teachers Towards Virtual Classroom Environment is a valid and reliable measurement tool. Within the scope of the study, suggestions for practitioners and researchers were presented, taking into account the research results.