Adaptation of the dispositions towards love pedagogy scale into Turkish and investigation of classroom teachers' dispositions towards love pedagogy

Love is one of the prerequisites for educational environments to be reliable, qualified and functional. While creating a loving educational environment, the level of the teacher's love for his student and his profession and how much he uses this love in the educational environment are significant. In order to determine the level of teachers' use of love in the educational environment, the "Dispositions Towards Love Pedagogy Scale (DTLP Scale)" which is based on Loreman (2011) developed by Yin et al. (2019) can be an important guide at this point. This study aims to adapt DTLP Scale to Turkish language and to examine primary school teachers' dispositions towards love pedagogy in terms of various variables. The universe of the research consisted of classroom teachers working in Diyarbakır in the 2020-2021 academic year. In the study, the snowball sampling method was used within the framework of non-random sampling for the selection of the sample. In snowball sampling; the researcher reaches other people through the people he can reach. 609 classroom teachers working in Diyarbakır was reached for the study. The study was carried out in two stages as the scale adaptation process and the examination of classroom teachers' dispositions towards love pedagogy. In the DTLP Scale adaptation process; the original form was translated into Turkish by two different translation teams consisting of three people, each of whom was assumed to speak both languages well, and the necessary corrections were made by the experts in the field. The revealed Turkish scale was translated into English again by using the back translation technique. The scale created with the back translation and the original English scale were compared by two different English teachers. With the consensus of the experts, it ended with the process of translating into Turkish. In order to test the language equivalence, the original and the Turkish translated version of the scale were distributed to 28 English teachers who were assumed to be bilingual at fifteen days intervals. Furthermore, it was seen that the language equivalance of the scale was provided with the language equivalance form. Then, with 54 classroom teachers, the Cronbach's Alpha value showing the internal consistency of the scale was determined to be α=.91(p<.05) in the pilot study. These values showed that the first form of the scale had sufficient internal consistency and reliability. After the pilot study, the reliability and validity analyses of the scale were made with the data obtained by conducting the main study with 609 classroom teachers. It was identified that the Cronbach's alpha (internal consistency) coefficient which was used to test the reliability of the scale was found to be α= .93 and the total item correlation values were r= .40 to r=.70. In order to test the scale validity, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were examined within the scope of construct validity studies. As a result of EFA, a six-factor structure explaining 65.54% of the total variance was obtained. The six-factor structure obtained as a result of EFA was tested with CFA and the fit indices were found to be significant (χ2=997.736, df=353, p=.00). In the model obtained from CFA, it was seen that the item load values between the observed variables and latent variables varied between .40 and .88, and the t values were significant. Other fit indices calculated for DTLP were like these; The NFI value was .911, the GFI value was .85, the AGFI value was .82, the CFI value was .93, and the RMSEA value was .073. The results obtained in the EFA and the fit indices obtained in the CFA showed the same model as the original version of the scale, and it can be said that the Turkish form has gained validity. By the help of the analyses made, important results were obtained in the direction that the Turkish form can be used in a valid and reliable way in the literature of our country. SPSS statistical package program was used to analyze the data in the process of examining the answers given to DTLP Scale in terms of various variables. In addition to descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, etc.), the t-Test for independent samples, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Kruskal Wallis-H test and Mann-Whitney U test were used to examine the dispositions of classroom teachers towards love pedagogy. As a result of the findings, when the teachers' dispositions towards love pedagogy were examined on the basis of dimensions, it was identified that the highest attitude scores were in the pedagogical kindness dimension, and the lowest attitude scores were in the forgiveness dimension. Considering the total score averages, it was seen that the teachers' attitudes were at a high level. In terms of various variables, it was observed that there were significant differences in the attitudes of teachers according to their gender, age, having children, marital status, education level and willingly choosing the teaching as a profession. Apart from these, it was determined that there was no significant difference in the attitudes of the teachers according to the type of faculty graduated from, their professional experience and the location of the school they work at.