Assessing readiness and attitudes: Scale development for online practicum in teacher education in the digital society

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument that measures pre-service teachers’ readiness and attitudes towards online teaching practice. The sample of the study consisted of 411 pre-service teachers studying at a Russian university. 87.7% of the participants were female and 12.3% were male. When the age groups are analyzed, the 18-19 age group is 33.3%, the 20-21 age group is 32%, the 22-23 age group is 22.9% and the 24 and over age group is 11.8%. 83.2% of the participants had previous online teaching experience. During the scale development process, expert opinion was obtained and validity and reliability analyses were conducted. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the scale had a three-factor structure: online teaching self-efficacy (11 items), online professional support and collaboration (8 items), and attitude towards online teaching and perception of development (5 items). This three-factor structure explained 67.1% of the total variance. The reliability coefficients of the scale ranged between 0.841 and 0.956 for the sub-dimensions. As a result of the latent profile analysis, the participants were categorized into six different profiles: competent and enthusiastic group (37%), high performance group (20%), collaboration-focused group (1%), moderate adaptation group (29%), low motivation group (4%), and open to development group (10%). The findings show that the developed scale is a valid and reliable tool that can be used to assess pre-service teachers’ online teaching readiness and attitudes. © 2025 by authors.