Development and initial validation of the Teaching Multiple School Subjects Role Conflict Scale (TMSS-RCS)

Abstract

There is a need to better understand the reality of enacting dual teaching positions, or roles, within a school. Therefore, role conflict experienced by teachers who are tasked with concurrently teaching multiple subjects warrants further understanding. For example, teachers responsible for teaching physical education (PE) and another school subject(s). There is, however, currently no published instrument for measuring role conflict of this nature. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Teaching Multiple School Subjects Role Conflict Scale, an instrument to measure interrole conflict between the roles of teaching PE and another school subject(s). Research aims included: (a) developing the instrument; (b) identifying a factor structure for the instrument using exploratory factor analysis; (c) confirming the factor structure through confirmatory factor analysis; and (d) examining the correlation between the newly validated measure and conceptually similar (i.e. role stress) and dissimilar (i.e. resilience) constructs. Exploratory factor analysis identified a stable three-factor, nine-item solution, including schedule conflict, energy expenditure conflict, and status conflict. Confirmatory factor analysis supported this solution, χ2(24) = 47.16, p < 0.001, non-normed fit index = 0.950, comparative fit index = 0.967, standardized root mean square residual = 0.069, and root mean square error of approximation = 0.069. The newly validated scale correlated appropriately with conceptually similar and dissimilar constructs.

The relationships among personal accomplishment, resilience and teachers’ experience of teaching multiple school subjects role conflict

“…TMSS-RC has been identified as a type of inter-role conflict that often leads to exacerbated demands on teachers who concurrently teach more than one school subject – for example, physical education and another school subject. This type of role stress experienced by teachers of multiple school subjects has been identified as having three components: status conflict, schedule conflict, and expenditure conflict (Iannucci and MacPhail, 2018; Iannucci et al, 2019). The three sub-domains of TMSS-RC will be unpacked in the section below.…”

“…For example, specialised arts schools may place greater importance on the arts, which highlights the contextually bound nature of role expectations (Richards, 2015). Subjects ranked towards the lower end of the context-specific school subject hierarchy are more likely to experience feelings of marginalisation, which contributes to teachers’ experiences of the TMSS-RC subdomain, status conflict (Iannucci et al, 2019).…”

“…Such transitions might include the time and energy required to get from one space to the next, class preparation, and class clean-up. Fatigue associated with the physical and emotion demands of teaching multiple school subjects, therefore, contributes to feelings of expenditure conflict (Iannucci et al, 2019).…”

“…Physical education, for example, is often positioned as marginal or peripheral to the main missions of schooling, which can leave physical educators feeling as if they, and the subject they teach, are unimportant (Kougioumtzis et al, 2011). Initial evidence suggests that teaching multiple school subjects role conflict (TMSS-RC) is related to conflicts among teachers’ schedule and timetable, energy expended to meet expectations across subjects, and conflict born from differences in social status allocated to teaching different subjects (Iannucci et al, 2019). The experience of TMSS-RC is most relevant in countries where teachers are dual-subject qualified through completion of their teacher education programmes such as Canada (Gambhir et al, 2008), South Africa (Nompula, 2013), and half of all European countries (Hardman, 2008).…”

“…It is also particularly relevant among teachers, including physical educators, whose other subject qualification is viewed as more central to schooling (e.g. mathematics, science; Iannucci et al, 2019).…”