Constructing and Validating the Teachers’ Professional Competence Evaluation Instrument

The current research was aimed mainly at constructing and validating the teachers’ professional competence evaluation instrument through descriptive correlational research method. The statistical population consisted of all primary school teachers employed by the city of Kerman’s board of education in the year 2015 – 2016. Participants of the study included 300 teachers selected via cluster sampling. The instrument of evaluating the teachers’ professional competence was constructed with 60 items based on the theoretical framework and the literature review. Initially, the fundamental factors of the instrument were recognized through exploratory factor analysis, then by means of confirmatory factor analysis, factor structure of the instrument was confirmed. The ultimate instrument had 30 items including three factors of programming for teaching, professional ethics and responsibility, and resource management. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for fundamental factors were measured as 0.86, 0.92 and 0.90, respectively. The item and composite reliability characteristics also showed the appropriate reliability of the instrument. In addition to exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, the convergent and discriminant validities’ results showed the instrument to have sufficiently good validity. Finally, it is suggested that this instrument could be used to evaluate the teachers’ professional competence.