Validating the teacher leadership scale in Oman: Implications for leadership development in Arab schools

Teacher leadership is increasingly recognised as a strategic driver of instructional quality and sustainable school improvement. However, the multidimensional and context-sensitive nature of the construct necessitates empirical validation when instruments are transferred across different linguistic, organisational and policy contexts. This study translated and psychometrically validated the Teacher Leadership Scale within Oman's centralised educational system. Using responses from 1086 public school teachers, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to examine the scale's factorial structure. Findings supported a contextually reorganised three-factor structure (Professional Practices, Association and Collective Work and Community Engagement) explaining 62.40% of the variance and diverging from the original six-factor structure. All 32 original items were retained, indicating that teacher leadership practices remained conceptually stable while their factorial structure differed in the Omani context. A bifactor model demonstrated the best overall fit, indicating a strong general teacher leadership factor alongside specific domains. Measurement invariance testing supported configural but not metric invariance across gender, suggesting caution in cross-gender comparisons. The study provides a psychometrically validated and contextually adapted version of the Teacher Leadership Scale, contributing to cross-contextual scholarship on teacher leadership measurement and informing leadership development efforts in Arab school systems.