SCSS

Sense of Community in School Scale (SCSS)

The Sense of Community in School Scale (SCSS; in Dutch Vragenlijst Groepsgevoel) has been developed and tested by a group of researchers from the universities of Amsterdam, VU Amsterdam, Leiden, Tilburg and Utrecht in the Netherlands. This activity was part of a larger research project on teacher communities, financed by the Dutch national Fund for Scientific Research (NWO-PROO; 2006 -  2011). The SCSS measures community feelings of school teachers, who work in a team or small department. They are asked to complete the questionnaire for that particular team or department.

SCSS is based on the questionnaire Psychology Sense of Community at Work (PSCW) of Burroughs and Eby (1998). The first step was to translate and adapt the PSCW to the Dutch context. The second step was to add items that refer to the theoretical framework of teacher communities that was developed in the project (Admiraal, Lockhorst, & Van der Pol, 2012).This framework included three main dimensions of teacher communities: 1) group identity, 2) shared domain and 3) shared interactional repertoire. The newly developed SCSS was administered in two Dutch samples: teachers in secondary schools and student teachers. We failed to replicate Burroughs and Eby’s factor structure and reliabilities. Therefore, we performed explorative factor analysis and optimized the resulting scales with reliability analyses. Finally, we examined the predictive validity by relating teachers’ sense of community to teacher dialogue (Admiraal & Lockhorst, 2012).

Below both the Dutch and English version of the SCSS are included. You can use it for free if you refer to Admiraal & Lockhorst (2012).

References

Admiraal, W., & Lockhorst , D. (2012). The Sense of Community in School Scale (SCSS). Journal of Workplace Learning, 24, 245 – 255.

Admiraal, W., Lockhorst, D., & Pol, J. van der. (2012). An expert study on a descriptive model of teacher communities. Learning Environments Research, 15, 345-361.

Burroughs, S. M., & Eby, L. T. (1998). Psychological Sense of Community at Work: A measurement system and explanatory framework. Journal of Community Psychology, 26, 509-532.