Middle Leadership Roles Questionnaire—School Edition (Catalan) (MLRQ-SE-CAT) as an Instrument to Study the Roles and Practices of Cycle Coordinators as Middle Leaders

Abstract

The leadership exerted by teachers, outside the management roles in education centers, is defined as middle leadership. There is a lack of instruments to identify their practices and roles in non-English speaking countries. The aim of the present study was to report the validation of an adapted version of the MLRQ-SE by De Nobile, named MLRQ-SE-CAT. By means of a process of translation and validation by a panel of experts, a pilot questionnaire was applied to a sample of 414 cycle coordinators in Primary Schools of the Catalan education system. The results show a high degree of validity (CFI = 0.950; TLI = 0.915; RMSEA = 0.061) and reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.83), thus validating a new instrument for measuring middle leadership in similar education systems. The instrument allows us to detect 6 roles and 33 practices that teachers exert in their role as middle leaders. There is a correlation between roles, especially between the Strategic Role and the roles of Administration and Management. MLRQ-SE-CAT allows identifying the habitual practices and roles of middle leaders in an educational context, where they are becoming increasingly important.