Examining pre-service teachers’ critical beliefs: Validation of the Critical Literacy Beliefs Survey (CLBS)

ABSTRACT This study details the development of the Critical Literacy Beliefs Survey (CLBS) with a sample of U.S. pre-service teachers (N = 405) and provides evidence of validity for developing measures of pre-service teachers’ critical literacy beliefs. The CLBS was created to gather data on pre-service teachers’ beliefs about critical literacy and answer the question: What is the internal factor structure of the Critical Literacy Beliefs Survey (CLBS), and what evidence of validity do scores from the CLBS provide? The validation of the CLBS and item development resulted in a three-phase process, including cognitive interviews, expert review of items, and survey data collection. Each phase involved a review of the data aligning with each claim. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to test the CLBS modeled on Lewison et al.’s (2002) four critical literacy dimensions (disrupting the commonplace, interrogating multiple perspectives, focusing on sociopolitical issues, and taking action for social justice). While the qualitative model comprised four factors, the CFA analysis of the CLBS resulted in a three-factor structure with a satisfactory model fit (CFI = .93, TLI = .91, RMSEA = .09, SRMR = .05). We deduced critical literacy tenets that teacher educators can actualize within teacher preparation to cultivate critically-oriented beginning teachers.