Examining the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale in the Italian Context: A Factorial Validity Study

Abstract

Introduction. A growing body of literature suggests that the quality of teacher-child relationships is a determining factor in children’s competence in social-emotional, behavioral functioning, and academic skills. Most of the research on student-teacher relationships has relied on these relationship perceptions. A well-known instrument to assess these perceptions is the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS). Up to now, only a few studies have focused on the cross-cultural validity of the STRS. To date, only one study have examined the factorial confirmatory validity in the United States. In the European context, other investigators have examined and confirmed the applicability of the STRS in Spain, Greece and in the Netherlands.Method. The purpose of this study is to examine the factorial structure validity of the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale) in the Italian schooling system on a sample consisting of 1256 children, ranging in age from 3 to 9 years, and 210 teachers.Results. The parameter estimates obtained from confirmatory factor analysis identified items with low factor loadings, suggesting that content revision is required for these items on the original version of the STRS, which comprises 28 items. Exploratory factor analysis showed that the deletion of 6 items from the scale offered a good model fit, suggesting that the remaining 22 items reliably and validly measure the constructs for the whole sample: closeness (α = .85), conflict (α = .92), and dependency (α = .69).Discussion and Conclusion. These findings might be attributed to the difference between Italian teachers’ cultural backgrounds and the original cultural context of the STRS. This study provides implications for construct validity research and substantive research using the STRS, given that the STRS is used extensively in intervention and research in early childhood education. On the basis of the obtained results, the questionnaire seems to be a adequate instrument to study the teacher-pupil relationship, both as a monitoring scale of a given relationship and as a way to help teachers achieve more awareness of their educational skills