Development and validation of the professional identity scale for preservice early children teachers in China

The purpose of this study is to explore the components of preservice early childhood teachers' professional identity in China and to develop a valid and reliable scale to measure the level of preservice early childhood teachers' professional identity. To identify the factors that constitute preservice early childhood teachers' professional identity, 13 subscales and 62 preliminary items were extracted through literature analysis and in-depth interviews. A Delphi survey was conducted to verify the appropriateness of the items by experts, and exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis were conducted to determine the final five components and 33 items. The final item of the preservice early childhood teacher professional identity Scale was used to test the item favorability, validity, and reliability. The results of the item validity analysis showed that all items met the assumption of normality and showed good item discrimination. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to verify validity, and the model fit of the scale (RMSEA .059) was found to be adequate. In addition, the standardization coefficient (.636 or higher) and average variance extracted (AVE) values of each construct's convergent validity were checked and verified through the covariance correlation between the discriminant validity components. Due to the high correlation of the constructs, multicollinearity among the constructs was tested to confirm their independence. The factor reliability of the scale is more than .867, and the total item reliability is .964, which is very high. The preservice early childhood teachers' professional identity scale developed in this study proved to be a valid and reliable scale to measure the level of preservice early childhood teachers' professional identity in various training programs in China.