Table 1. Item Correlation for AVSEM
This paper aims to develop and standardize the emotional maturity of high school teachers scale. Emotional maturity is a process in which the personality is continuously striving for greater sense of emotional health, both intra-physically and intra-personally. If teachers are emotionally mature which means if they have the ability to realize the psychological knowledge and utilize it, they will be able to help students at right time by checking their problems as they start advancing. Teachers should teach children to develop emotional maturity, but in order to do this they must have a similar characteristic in themselves. The steps followed for its construction and standardization are (i) Ensuring purpose and usefulness of items, (ii) Structuring the tool, (iii) Pilot study and item analysis, (iv) Validity, (v) Reliability, (vi) Final draft of the tool. The researcher developed the preliminary version of AVSEM Scale (104 items) with simple, clear, and concise statements for better understanding both in Tamil and English versions. The validity for each item was tested. Thus the final AVSEM Scale consists of 60 items. This scale was aimed at covering the knowledge and conceptions of high school teachers about the emotional maturity. This tool will help to the Emotional Maturity of high school teachers.
Emotional maturity is an important aspect in the behaviour of a teacher. The issue of emotional maturity of teachers is being addressed more and more these days. A good teacher will be someone who knows and loves his subject and want to communicate it to others and who has the emotional maturity to do it successfully. A teacher with high emotional maturity is able to respond appropriately to workplace stress and to emotional behavior of his coworkers as well as students. The quality of being emotionally mature teacher deals with various abilities to deal with different kinds of emotions.
Survey is a fact finding study. Best (1986) states that “The survey method involves interpretation, comparison, measurement, classification, evaluation, and generalization. All directed towards a proper understanding and solution of significant educational problems”. The investigator adopted the survey method to find out the “Construction of emotional maturity of high school teachers scale (AVSEM)”.
The tool (AVSEM) was developed by the researcher to measure the emotional maturity of high school teachers, who are handling classes from sixth to tenth standard. The investigator referred books on emotional maturity and standardized tools on emotional maturity to acquire knowledge for constructing the tool. Emotional Maturity Scale (1990) prepared and standardized by Yashvir Singh and Mallesh Bhargava, contains 48 items with five dimensions, namely emotional unstability, emotional regression, social maladjustment, personality disintegration, and lack of independence. Emotional Maturity Scale (1984) constructed and standardized by Roma Pal, contains 40 items with five dimensions, namely emotional unstability, emotional regression, faulty social adjustment, lack of independent and flexibility, and adaptability
These standardized tools seem to be outdated for the current participants. So the investigator decided to prepare a tool of his own to measure the emotional maturity of high school teachers. The investigator has referred the following books for developing the Emotional Maturity Scale and its dimensions. They are “Leadership in Public Organizations: An Introduction Second Edition” written by Wart and Suino (2012), the book “The Secret of Maturity, Third Edition” written by Fitzmaurice, K. E. (2012), The book “Emotional Intelligence 2.0.” written by Bradberry, T., & Greaves, J. (2009), the book “Emotional Maturity established through Torah” written by Adahan, M. (1999) and “Psychology of adolescents in India” written by Chaube, S. P. (2002). These books develop the Emotional Maturity Scale with five dimensions, namely Emotional Manifestation, Emotional Stability, Emotional Self-Awareness, Emotional Adjustment, and Emotional Adequacy. Discussion with psychologists and professors and active members in the field of education from various educational institutions helped the investigator to refine the tool.
AVSEM was constructed with five dimensions, namely Emotional Manifestation, Emotional Stability, Emotional Self-awareness, Emotional Adjustment, and Emotional Adequacy.
Manifestation is the expression of our emotions. When the teachers express their emotions in a right time and right place they would be emotionally balanced and natural in their activities during their teaching learning process. Emotional manifestation of teachers, include accepting the students' or peers' criticism toward encouraging the achievement of students behaving unsophisticated.
Stability in emotions means firmly established or fixed, not easily upset or disturbed, well balanced and capable to remain in same state. On the other hand, emotional instability is a tendency to display rapid and unpredictable changes in emotionality (Sharma, 2006). It refers to the characteristics of a person that does not allow excessive reaction or swings in mood or marked changes in any emotive situation. The emotionally stable teacher is able to do what is required of him in any given situation. Contrary to it, emotional unstability is tendency to quick changing and unreliable responses and is a factor representing syndrome of irritability, stubbornness, temper tantrums, lack of capacity to dispose of problems and seek help for day to day problems.
Self awareness is the ability to accurately perceive one's own emotions in the moment and understand one's tendencies across situations. A high degree of selfawareness requires willingness to tolerate the discomfort of focusing on feelings that may be negative (Bradberry and Greaves, 2009). Self-awareness is one of the foundations of emotional maturity. Teachers who are self-aware tend to be better at taking criticism, which is another supporting trait of emotional maturity. This is because they are often more critical of themselves to begin with, being more perceptive of their own actions and emotions.
Emotional adjustment refers to a teacher's state of psychological and physical well-being. It is very necessary to all kinds of development. Teaching is full of experimentation and makes a foundation for an excellent impact. During this period some teachers may experience some kind of emotional disturbance or problems. Teachers who have high stress may suffer from lots of emotional problems, such as tension, confusion, depression, anxiety, anger, and fatigue. Such teachers may possibly give up their teaching performance and could be badly affected. A satisfactory state of emotional adjustment may exist when psychological and physical drives and urges are satisfied and such state helps to enjoy the teaching.
Emotional adequacy refers to a broad array of activities directly or indirectly related to the mental well-being component of health. If teachers are to be healthy, they must be mentally mature. Health implies more than the absence of disease. The effective teachers develop broad outlines for their own personal development and professional growth. Emotionally adequate teachers are responsible for their own character-like sympathy, cooperation, lively interest to take up heavy work load and association with children.
The pilot test was made to find weakness and usability of the items. It was tried out on an investigative basis with 100 respondents. The goal at this point was to get the irrelevant items out of the procedure. Items which were lengthy, ambiguous and not appealing were reconstructed to be clear, precise, and easily answerable.
An item analysis shows the degree to which the various items “hang together” (Sommer and Sommer, 2005). The tool with 104 items was administered to a sample of 100 teachers from sixth to tenth standard belonging to Government, Aided and Matriculation schools in rural and urban areas. The teachers were instructed to select the test options for each item by a tick in the relevant column provided in the questionnaire. The collected responses were scored with the help of a scoring key prepared by the investigator. The statements had a scoring key in the order 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 for the options very much, much, undecided, probably, and never, respectively (Appendix 1). The total score of AVSEM ranges between 520 and 104. Item total and the sum of each individual score were calculated.
Item total correlation should be at least 0.4 and Alpha value should be ≥ 0.7 for the item to be accepted. The Corrected item total correlation's lowest value indicated items that are inconsistent. They were removed step by step and hence the Alpha value increased. Thus the removal of 44 items resulted in an increase of Cronbach's Alpha from 0.661 to 0.724. High value of Cronbach's alpha indicated good consistency of the items in the scale. The item total correlation values are given in Table 1.
Table 1. Item Correlation for AVSEM
The validity of the tool has been found in different methods. The investigator established the face and concurrent validities for AVSEM.
The preliminary draft tool of the variable AVSEM was given to the experts in the field education, educational psychology, principals and professors of the colleges of education for obtaining their opinion. Necessary rewording and rephrasing of the items in the scale have been carried out with the help of experts. Finally the tool contained 60 items with 13 in emotional manifestation, 11 in emotional stability, 10 in emotional self-awareness, 13 in emotional adjustment, and 13 in emotional adequacy, respectively. Dimension wise distribution of the items in AVSEM is given in the table (Table 2).
Table 2. Dimension wise Distribution of Items in AVSEM
The scoring key for the emotional maturity scale was distributed based on two categories, namely, positive, and negative statements. Positive statements had a scoring in the order 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 for the options very much, much, undecided, probably, and never, respectively. The negative statements had a scoring key in the reverse order in Table 3.
Table 3. Scoring Key for AVSEM
To establish concurrent validity, the researcher used the Emotional Maturity Scale (EMS) (1990) Prepared and Standardized by Yashvir Singh and Mallesh Bhargava. The investigator administered the tool (AVSEM) to 100 teachers from three different schools and later EMS was given to the same set of teachers on the same day after an hour break. After scoring, the product moment correlation coefficient was found to be 0.764, which is substantial. Thus the concurrent validity of the tool was established.
Of the different methods, split-half method and test-retest method were used to determine the reliability coefficient of the tool.
In split-half method, AVSEM was administered to 100 teachers from three different schools. The scores of all odd numbered items were combined into one group and all the even numbers into another group. Reliability estimate of the two halves was determined using Spearman-Brown Prophecy formula, r' = 2r / (1+r) and it was found to be 0.758, which is high.
To establish the reliability of AVSEM by test-retest method, it was administered to 100 high school teachers and it was re-administered to the same set of teachers after an interval of 15 days. The two sets of scores were correlated using Pearson product moment correlation and the value was found to be 0.842, which is substantial (Best and Kahn, 2006).
After establishing the reliability and validity of the tools the investigator printed the three tools for data collection. The particular of the AVSEM is given in Table 4. The final draft tool have been enclosed (Appendix – 2).
Table 4. Distribution of Items in Emotional Maturity Scale (AVSEM) – Final Draft
Emotional maturity scale was prepared with 104 items and it was administered to a sample of 100 teachers from sixth to tenth standard belonging to Government, Aided, and Matriculation schools in rural and urban areas. The statements had a scoring key in the order 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 for the options very much, much, undecided, probably, and never, respectively. The total score of AVSEM ranges between 520 and 104. Item Total Correlation should be at least 0.4 and Alpha value should be ≥ 0.7 for the item to be accepted. The Corrected Item Total Correlation's lowest value indicated items that are inconsistent. They were removed step by step and hence the Alpha value increased. Thus the removal of 44 items resulted in an increase of Cronbach's Alpha from 0.661 to 0.724. High value of Cronbach's Alpha indicated good consistency of the items in the scale. The preliminary draft tool of the variable AVSEM was given to the experts in the field education for obtaining their opinion. Necessary rewarding and rephrasing of the items in the scale have been carried out with the help of experts. Finally the tool contained 60 items with 13 in emotional manifestation, 11 in emotional stability, 10 in emotional self-awareness, 13 in emotional adjustment, and 13 in emotional adequacy, respectively.
Evaluation is making decisions about various phenomena or presentation on the basis of some determined objectives. Therefore, an instrument is valid if it measures the constructs it was developed to address. The AVSEM has been evaluated for face and concurrent validity. It also covers all the predetermined objectives and was able to discriminate the respondents on the basis of the phenomena measured. This scale items are prepared on the basis of pre-determined specific objectives and ensured that the expected answers were definite and objective, provided clear spelt-out scheme for scoring and conducting evaluation under identical and ideal condition, it helped in enhancing reliability. Validity is the most important quality needed for an evaluation tool. If the tool is able to measure what it is intended to measure, it can be said that the tool is valid. It was fulfilled the objectives for which it was developed. A tool, however, well it satisfied all the above criteria. This scale was aimed at cover the knowledge and conceptions of high school teachers about the emotional maturity. This tool helps to the emotional maturity of high school teachers.