Infant Toddler Education Belief Scale for Pre-Service Early Childhood Educators (ITEBS4PECES): Validity and Reliability Analysis

The aim of the current study is to develop a scale that measure pre-service early childhood educators' beliefs about infant and toddler education(I/TE). 384 candidate early childhood educators from different public universities were constituted the sample of the study. Reliability and validity analysis were run for the 60-items "Infant Toddler Education Belief Scale for pre-service early childhood educators (ITEBS4PECES)". Explanatory and Confirmatory factor analysis of "ITEBS4PECES" indicated that "ITEBS4PECES" is a 5-Likert scale with 35 items and four factors. Factor loading values ranged between 0.439 and 0.762. The total variance explained by the scale is 39.02%. The reliability coefficients of Cronbach alpha ranged from 0.81 to 0.85 for factors. As one of the first attempts to measure beliefs about infant-toddler education of pre-service teachers, this valid and reliable scale is believed to lead more research on infant toddler education and by this way contribute a lot to early childhood education field.