factorial structure and measurement invariance of the engaged teacher scale: the case of teachers of english as a foreign language

Engagement with different aspects of language teaching and learning has been documented as a significant antecedent of successful language teaching. a large number of studies have shown that language teacher engagement is associated with such variables as teacher self-efficacy, teacher burnout, job satisfaction, learner motivation, and second language (l2) achievement. the previous studies, however, have often resorted to instruments from mainstream education to assess l2 teachers’ engagement; the problem is that the validity of these instruments for measuring l2 teacher engagement is unsubstantiated. the present study was undertaken to adopt and validate engaged teacher scale (ets) in the context of teaching english as a foreign language (efl) in iran. the required data were collected from 147 practicing efl teachers online or in person. factor loading analysis indicated that two items had a factor loading below 0.3, meaning that they did not contribute enough to the total variance in the respondents’ scores, and they were thus removed from the item pool. construct validation via confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) showed that the four-factor structure originally proposed for the ets also held true for measuring efl teaching engagement. further, multilevel cfa showed that this four-factor structure was invariable across male and female teachers. the practical use of the validated questionnaire is discussed and suggestions are presented for further research in the future.