Chemistry Teachers' Self-Efficacy Perception Scale for Teaching in Chemistry Laboratories

Self-efficacy is a situational and subject-dependent construct instead of a personal characteristic, general perception, or personal competence. This study aimed to develop and validate a scale that would determine chemistry teachers' perceived self-efficacy for teaching in the laboratories. To this end, a self-efficacy perception scale for teaching in the lab (SEPTL, for short) was developed over several stages, subjected to exploratory factor (EFA) and confirmatory factor (CFA) analysis, as well as a series of validity and reliability studies involving 261 chemistry teachers. The results of the EFA and CFA revealed that our SEPTL scale includes three factors and 29 items. Factor 1 (conducting experiments) includes 13 items and accounted for 28.372% of the total variance. Factor 2 (using technology in the lab) included nine items and accounted for 16.654% of the total variance. Factor 3 (lab safety) included seven items and accounts for 14.023% of the total variance. The whole scale accounts for 59.049% of the variance. Our findings demonstrate that the Chronbach's alpha was 0.957 for the whole, 0.952 for Factor 1, 0.878 for Factor 2, and 0.875 for Factor 3. These values suggest that the SEPTL scale is highly reliable.