Development and Validation of Physical Education Teacher Workload Scale

Abstract

Teacher workload is a major contributor to teacher well-being, engagement in work, and instruction effectiveness, especially in schools in the public sector and with limited resources. Physical Education teachers are uniquely burdened by their workload responsibilities as a result of their instructional, administrative, extracurricular and physically demanding work, yet very few and context specific measurement is available in Pakistan. This study was aimed at development and validation of Physical education teacher workload scale (PETWS) in government secondary schools of Punjab, Pakistan. Following scale development procedures that have been established, items were created based on literature review and practitioner input and content validity was established using expert evaluation. After item refinement, the final scale was made up of 18 items. Exploratory Factor Analysis made on a sample of about 250 Physical Education teachers produced a clear four factor structure which was corroborated by an acceptable Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value (KMO = 0.774) and a significant Bartlett's Test of Sphericity (kh2 = 715.12, p < .001). Confirmative Factor Analysis of an independent sample of teachers who were not part of the study (around 200) indicated a good fit of the model (extra statistics down below) such as stats of fit as kh2/df = 2.36, CFI = .928, TLI = .919, RMSEA = .058, SRMR = .049. Convergent validity was evident with Average Variance Extracted values ranging from .53 to .57 and discriminant validity evident using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and HTMT ratios below .85. The scale showed acceptable internal consistency with an overall Cronbach's alpha of .809 ranging from .78 to .83 on the subscales. These results suggest that PETWS is a valid and reliable tool for measuring workload-related organizational support in Physical Education teachers and can be used successfully in research efforts and policy development to enhance the working conditions and functional functioning of teachers.