The Sense of Community in School Scale (SCSS)

Purpose - Teacher communities might create excellent conditions for teacher learning in schools, such as a teacher dialogue. The way teachers perceive and interpret these conditions seems to be crucial for their effects on learning. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test the Sense of Community in School Scale (SCSS).

Design/methodology/approach - The SCSS was completed by a sample of 271 Dutch school teachers and student teachers and related to self-reported opportunities for teacher dialogue. It was hypothesized that sense of community and teacher dialogue were related, that teachers showed a stronger sense of community than student teachers, and that their sense of community was stronger related to teacher dialogue for teachers than for student teachers.

Findings - Teachers showed higher scores on two of the six scales of the SCSS (group identity and meaningful relationships). For both teachers and student teachers, three aspects of sense of community (shared interaction repertoire, tolerance of individual differences, and meaningful relationships) were positively related to teacher dialogue, with stronger relations with two other aspects (group identity and shared domain) for teachers than for student teachers.

Research limitations/implications - Although SCSS showed promising results, more technical research should be done to ensure its construct validity, differential validity and predictive validity.

Originality/value - Teaching is still seen as isolated work. More insight in how to ascertain collaborative workplace conditions in school might further ideas on workplace learning for school teachers.