Development of an innovative thinking tendency scale for pre-school teachers

In this study, it was aimed to develop an innovative thinking disposition scale for preschool teachers. Therefore, the study was designed as basic research. In the study group of the researcher, a total of 787 teachers were reached, including 280 teachers for Exploratory Factor Analysis, 419 teachers for Confirmatory Factor Analysis, 60 teachers for Criterion Validity, and 28 teachers for Test-Retest, working in public and private kindergartens across Turkey. In order to determine the demographic characteristics of the participants, a personal information form and an innovative thinking tendency scale are included. In order to test the criterion validity, "Individual Innovation Scale" and "Resistance to Change Scale" were used. In the analysis of the data, Exploratory Factor Analysis (Main Axes) was calculated to explore the structure, Confirmatory Factor Analysis to confirm the structure, Spearmen rank correlation coefficient for criterion validity and test-retest reliability, and Cronbach Alpha coefficient for reliability in terms of internal consistency were calculated. As a result of the research, a one-dimensional 10-item structure emerged. According to the results of Exploratory Factor Analysis, the explained variance rate was found to be 38% and the Cronbach Alpha coefficient was found to be .85. When the Confirmatory Factor Analysis results were examined, CMIN/DF was 2.411, CFI value was .98, GFI .96, NNFI .97 and RMSEA .059. In the criterion validity results, .674 positive moderate correlations were found with the Individual Innovation Scale, and -.307 negative moderate correlations were found with the Change Resistance Scale. When the test-retest reliability is examined, it is seen that the reliability in terms of stability is .92 was found to be high. In this case, it was observed that the validity and reliability of the measurements obtained with the "Innovative Thinking Tendency Scale" were at a high level. Keywords: innovative thinking, scale development, preschool reacher, innovation.