Developing and Validating a Teacher Classroom Justice Scale for the Iranian EFL Context

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Psychological, Health & Territorial Sciences, University of Chieti-Pescara, Via dei Vestini 29 - 66100 Chieti, Italy

10.22055/rals.2023.18066

Abstract

Classroom justice is the degree of perceived fairness in the distribution of outcomes, enactment of procedures, and teacher-student relationships in classrooms. This study aimed to develop and validate a Teacher Classroom Justice Scale (TCJS). After thoroughly reviewing the extant literature, scrutinizing the existing questionnaires, and interviewing experts in the field, a draft version of the instrument involving 46 items was developed and pilot-tested with 30 Iranian EFL teachers. Subsequently, another group entailing 398 Iranian EFL teachers answered the scale, and reliability was examined for each of its components. Subsequently, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed that a three-factor solution about procedural, interactional, and distributive justice could best explain the scale. Finally, the EFA results were approved through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), which showed that the finalized TCJS consists of 18 items and enjoys good psychometric properties of validity and reliability. Language instructors, researchers, and practitioners can use the present study findings by employing the TCJS to assess the perceptions of classroom justice in the particular domain of second/foreign language (L2) education.

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