VALIDATION OF THE TEACHER DECISION-MAKING INVENTORY (TDMI): MEASURING DATA-BASED AND INTUITIVE DIMENSIONS IN TEACHERS' DECISION PROCESS

Abstract

Teacher decision making has a great impact on the quality of education in schools, yet we know little about how teachers make decisions in practice. It is assumed that teachers use both intuition and data in the different steps of the decision process. No reliable, valid scales are available to research both dimensions during the different steps of teachers' decision process (problem definition, data collection, sense making, and evaluation of alternatives). Building on the integrated framework we constructed in earlier research, the main aim of this study was to develop and validate a Teacher Decision-Making Inventory (TDMI). One hundred and one teachers in adult education participated voluntarily in a web-based survey. Based on the good EFA factor loadings, the CFA fit indices, and the internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha), we conclude that the TDMI is a valid psychometric tool that can be used to assess the intuitive and data-driven dimensions of teachers' decisions in large-scale quantitative research.