Development of Occupational Commitment Scale for Teachers of Teacher Education Institutions

In this study, Teachers Occupational Commitment Scale is developed with reference of existing occupational scales. The four dimensions of Teacher Commitment are used as a foundation to develop a measure of Teacher Occupational Commitment scale. Being as an essential dimension of teacher occupational commitment research, with detailed preliminary researches and further data analysis, ideal results have been achieved but there are some deficiencies in terms of object sample, which can be generated as the following three aspects respectively: All samples are from the urban who can be influenced by the particular privileged, economic and cultural factors in the urban and consequently affect the result, causing the inapplicability of this research result in rural areas. It is still to be further investigated to confirm whether the sample is adequately representative, for it selected only the employees from teachers of the teacher education institutions, to represent specially IASE teachers from teacher education institutions. It is still uncertain to confirm the similarity of teachers’ occupational commitment structure of teachers from DIET, CTE and RIE with that of the other teachers of the teacher education institutions or the appropriateness of studying these types of teachers of teacher education institutions in a merged way. Teachers’ Occupational Commitment Scale for teacher education institutions were contains five dimensions: psychological perspective, Sociological perspective, Commitment towards the profession, Commitment towards the institution and Commitment towards the student teachers. Verified by series data analysis tests, Teachers’ Occupational Commitment Scale for teacher education institutions has ideal reliability and content validity. The practical implication of this study is the validated self-developed Teachers Occupational Commitment Scale, which is likely applicable in the Indian teacher education institutional context. The validated scale can be suggested to be used as an evaluative tool to assess the level to which teachers are committed to their career covering psychological aspects, sociological aspects, students’ learning-teaching, institution, and profession. Importantly, knowing the level of these five aspects of Teachers Occupational Commitment would facilitate the institution administrators to identify the factors that influence teachers’ quality of work life and institution effectiveness. The recognition of Teachers Occupational Commitment as vital on education and training outcomes, this study has advanced an Indian version of Teachers Occupational Commitment scale measured by 25 reliable and validated self-developed items.

Although much more research remains to be done either conceptually or statistically, the present Teachers’ Occupational Commitment scale deserves to be a foundation from which to compare findings across studies and research settings. More imperatively, the findings make the present Teachers’ Occupational Commitment scale possible to apprehend the value-added of Teachers’ Occupational Commitment as a construct.