CROATIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION-HRVATSKI CASOPIS ZA ODGOJ I OBRAZOVANJE, vol.26, no.3, pp.935-967, 2024 (SSCI)
The importance of interdisciplinary education is a well-known fact in today's world. However, do educators feel sufficiently prepared to implement such an approach? Identifying this aspect among pre-service science teachers (PSTs), who are the educators of the future, will be an important step in terms of improvement efforts. Building upon this premise, the research aims to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool for assessing the self-confidence of pre-service teachers in Elementary Science, Biology, Physics, and Chemistry Education Programs. In order to determine the scale construct validity, a two-stage process was undertaken. In the first stage, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted with a sample comprising 300 pre-service teachers. Subsequently, in the second stage, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using data collected from 174 pre-service teachers. The findings indicated that the psychometric properties of the Self-Confidence Scale for Interdisciplinary Teaching (SCSIT) were robust and satisfactory for measuring confidence levels in interdisciplinary teaching. Consequently, a valid and reliable assessment tool, which can be used in research on interdisciplinary teaching, was introduced to the literature.