Educational Leadership Research

Abstract In educational environments, each employee who plays a role in learning is considered an educational leader and must be able to create a favorable environment by assisting those who play a role in education to achieve the goals of these institutions. The development of organizations, especially educational institutions, happens in environments with no discouraging and toxic factors. The present descriptive-normative study was conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the Toxic Educational Environment Questionnaire (Rasoul et al., 2021). The statistical population of this study was 1556 educational-cultural employees from Education Organization in Sarab, Iran. Based on the Krejcie and Morgan’s table and corresponding to the size of the community, data were collected from 351 available individuals. The relative size of gender and city were considered in the sample. Given that educational experts agreed on the criteria of comprehensiveness, transparency, and appropriateness, the content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed. In addition, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability calculation, and correlation of subscales with each other and with the entire questionnaire were used to analyze the data. The findings from exploratory factor analysis indicated that the questionnaire was saturated with three factors. Confirmatory factor analysis also indicated a favorable fit of the three-factor structure with the data. Cronbach's alpha coefficient values for the entire questionnaire and the bullying, harassment, and ostracism subscales indicated that the instrument was reliable. Overall, the results of the study indicate the desirability of the stability and validity of the Toxic Educational Environment Questionnaire and its applicability as a valid instrument.