The Development and Implementation of a Scale to Assess the Causes of Conflict in the Classroom for University Students

This study was undertaken to develop a "scale for causes of conflict in the classroom" that will assess and identify the causes of classroom conflicts in university students. Construct validity of the scale was tested by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and it was determined that the scale consisted of 8 factors. In the Scale for Causes of Conflict in the Classroom, the first factor consisted of 9 items, the second factor consisted of 8 items, third factor consisted of 7 items, fourth, fifth and sixth factors consisted of 4 items each, and seventh and eight factors consisted of 3 items each. After examining the item structures that the identified factors consisted, the following factors were selected: appreciation of the student by the teacher, teaching-learning environment skills of the teacher, student behavior, communicative skills of the teacher, personal characteristics of the student, fair treatment by the teacher, biased behavior by the teacher and teachers' obeying the classroom rules. Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient values for each factor and the whole scale were found to be 0.91; 0.90; 0.84; 0.87; 0.82; 0.85; 0.77; 0.63 and 0.95, respectively. After the scale was developed, 350 students from the department of education were administered the scale and the causes of conflict were determined according to student views by taking means and standard deviations into consideration. In order to identify the effect of individual variables, t-test, one-way analysis of variance and Scheffe tests were used. Analysis showed that the variables of "gender" and "department attended by students" resulted in significant differences in student perceptions whereas the variable of "classroom" did not affect the perceptions of students.