Developing an instrument for measuring the effect of democratic classroom environment on leadership behavior of students

The classroom is a miniature society where students extensively interact and exchange experiences and information. A democratic classroom environment provides students with opportunities for grooming as leaders. It is important to record students’ leadership development in a classroom context. There is a lack of a reliable instrument to assess students’ leadership behavior in the context of a democratic classroom. The current study aimed to develop and validate an instrument for measuring high school teachers' perceptions about the effect of a democratic classroom environment on students’ leadership behavior. The scale development method of Benson and Clark (1982) was used for developing and initial validation of the scale, which consisted of the following stages: literature review, item generation, quantitative assessments, and final validation. A 13-item scale was developed and validated for high school teachers (n=300) working in public high schools using an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) approach. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method created a 2-factor model for the Democratic Classroom Behavior Scale (DCBS): effective communication (a=0.915) and decision-making (a=0.914). The two domains of the newly developed scale were consistent with existing literature. The high mean score (M=3.96-4.17) indicated that democratic classrooms had a positive impact on students’ leadership behavior. For further validation, the instrument is recommended to be used in other contexts.

Keywords: Democratic, Leadership, Miniature, Environment, Analysis