Professional integration of teachers through the many aspects of socialisation at work using ISaTE as a measurement tool
- Socialisation at work, Novice teachers, Professional development, Measurement Scale validation process, Measurement instrument design, Professional integration
Abstract
This study presents the design and validation process for an instrument to measure the socialisation at work of beginning teachers. In pursuit of these objectives, we propose in this contribution the design and validation process for a scale for measuring socialisation at work specific to the teaching profession. A total of 1487 teachers from different levels of compulsory education in Cameroon were interviewed. The theoretical foundations and exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses highlighted four dimensions of socialisation at work: socialisation to the work group, to the micro- political climate, to teaching tasks and to the organisation. To test and validate ISaTE, an online questionnaire was widely distributed in primary and secondary schools via teachers enrolled in a Master’s programme in Education Sciences at our universities.
In compliance with various consensus criteria for scale validation processes, the proposed instrument presents strong validity arguments. This contribution addresses the major issue of a global approach to teacher induction that goes beyond approaches centred on the teacher's work in the classroom. In this contribution, we have modelled teachers' socialisation at work and presented a measurement instrument (ISaTE) that makes it possible to jointly examine the multiple dimensions of the teaching profession. Our results indicate that four dimensions coexist in the process of teachers' socialisation at work: teaching tasks, the work group, the micro-political climate and the organisation. The obvious importance of each of these leads us to question the theoretical postulate formulated following Ball (1994) and to assert that socialization to the micropolitical climate is not a component of socialization to the work group, but a distinct dimension. As a result, we have adapted our attempt to model teachers' socialization to work by including this dimension in its own right.