Development and Psychometric Assessment of the Dyslexia Awareness Instrument in Teachers

Abstract

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. Teachers may not be very sure about the definition of dyslexia and generally struggle to tell the difference between dyslexic learners and slow learners. Developing the DyAwI may provide an important psychometric assessment tool in determining the awareness level of the teacher and being able to make this distinction. A descriptive, explorative design was used in this study. The study consisted of two main phases. In the first phase, in order to develop the instrument, a literature review and a pilot study on 20 primary school teachers were carried out, and in line with expert opinions, the content validity index was calculated. In the second stage, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out to identify the construct validity and reliability. The study included 182 primary school teachers for the second stage. The KMO and Bartlett test values, which determine the suitability of DyAwI for factor analysis, were found to be 0.77 and 0.000, respectively. The overall Cronbach’s alpha value of DyAwI was .75. As a result of the assessment of its construct validity, the scale consisted of 2 factors and 14 items. The findings of the study show that the tool is reliable and sufficient. The instrument is easy to understand, and this tool can determine the dyslexia awareness levels of teachers. DyAwI could promote teachers’ awareness of dyslexia and support the early identification of primary school students with dyslexia. It is believed that, thanks to the data obtained from the instrument, teachers will be able to decide on an educational assessment of a student with reading difficulties more quickly.