A New Tool for Teachers and Principals
Based on ‘Professional Capital’ by Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan
Now available in Dutch from Turning Learning
About the Professional Capital Survey
In our effort to help teachers and leaders cultivate and circulate professional capital in their schools and systems, we have created a professional capital index that seeks to:
- assist teachers and school leaders to self-assess the status of professional capital in their schools, and
- deepen understanding of how and to what extent schools and educational systems develop and circulate professional capital.
Each survey has 36 items (12 items for each of the three dimensions of professional capital: human, social, and decisional capital). For each item, respondents are asked to indicate the degree to which they agree or disagree with a short statement. The whole survey takes about 20 minutes to complete.
The Professional Capital Survey is not designed and should not be used to evaluate schools, teachers, and/or school administrators as part of an accountability system of any sort. It was developed only to allow teachers and school leaders to illuminate the ways in which professional capital is distributed throughout their schools and systems and subsequently empower practitioners at every level to work collaboratively to improve the way all forms of capital are developed and circulated.
The Professional Capital Survey gives schools, school clusters, districts, provinces/states and countries:
- simple, clear, valid and reliable measures of human, social, and decisional capital
- survey responses organized in simple, user-friendly reports
- tailored feedback to enhance professional capital
- access to a data portal to create customized reports
This online survey is administered by Conexus <support@conexus.no>. Please contact Conexus directly for technical support.
Additional consulting services to further assess professional capital in education systems and support the development of system-wide strategies to cultivate and circulate professional capital might be available upon request. The content and terms of these additional services are negotiated on a case-by-case basis. If interested, please contact: <professionalcapital@icloud.com>.
The Professional Capital Surveys for Teachers and Principals can be downloaded by agreeing to the following terms and conditions below:
Cost
| Individual school site | $600 USD |
| College/Higher Ed/Central Office | $1,000 USD |
| Cluster or system of 25 schools or less | $3,000 USD |
| Cluster or system of 26 to 99 schools | $6,000 USD |
| Cluster or system of 100 to 999 schools | $9,000 USD |
| Provincial, State or National system of 1000 schools or more | $12,000 USD |
Costs of additional consulting services are determined on a case-by-case basis.
Get the Online Professional Capital Survey Service
It only takes three simple steps:
- Download and complete the attached Professional Capital Excel Database Spreadsheet. It includes names, email addresses, and roles (e.g., teacher, principal, etc.) of the people who will take the survey, organized hierarchically (that is, specifying the organizational units they belong to, e.g., school department, school, district, province/state, etc).
- Contact us at professionalcapital@icloud.com and let us know:
- your interest in administering the online professional capital survey
- the number of schools where it will be administered
- the dates during which the online survey should be administered (at least a two-week notice required)
- the names, email addresses, and roles of the teachers and school leaders who will take the survey in a spreadsheet – See Step 1 – attached to the email.
- name, email and phone of the primary contact in your school or system who we should interact with prior and during the survey administration.
- Pay the first half of the cost after you hear from us. The second half is due once the survey has been administered. Your invoice will administered by Michael Fullan Enterprises.
What to expect prior and during the administration of the Online Professional Capital Survey
We will take care of administering the survey, troubleshooting, and producing the report of survey results.
Your responsibilities include:
- Preparing and sending us a hierarchically organized spreadsheet with names and email addresses of the teachers and school leaders who will take the survey.
- Encourage teachers and leaders in your organization to take the survey – e.g. “Save the date” and reminder emails, formal invitations during school or system-wide meetings, making time in a school- or system-wide event for people to fill in the survey.
- Appoint a contact person in your organization to interact with us prior and during the survey administration.
- Communicate any technical problems to: support@conexus.no
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Professional Capital?
Professional Capital is a key asset that is invested, accumulated, and circulated to yield continuous growth and strong return in student and adult learning in an education system. Professional Capital is a function of three interrelated components:
HUMAN CAPITAL is best defined as the talent of individuals. Schools and systems with high human capital, when combined with high social and decisional capital, not only do better, but also enhance the talent of others.
SOCIAL CAPITAL is the collaborative power of the group to continuously get better at deepening student learning by openly and transparently examining, refining and transforming instructional practice.
DECISIONAL CAPITAL is defined as the capacity to make increasingly good decisions over time based on professional judgment informed by evidence.
The term Professional Capital was coined by Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan in their book Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School (Teachers College Press/Ontario Principals Council, 2012). school and system-wide strategies to revitalize the teaching profession so that it becomes a force of positive change that benefits all individuals, public education systems, and society as a whole.
What do online Professional Capital survey reports look like?
The report includes inquiry maps that stimulate educators to reflect on their practices; and an analysis and feedback on Human, Social, and Decisional capital.
Does the Professional Capital Index provide valid and reliable measures of Professional Capital?
All survey items were developed following a rigorous process of design and reliability and validity testing.
Content Validity of Professional Capital Index. In the early stages of the development of the Professional Capital Index, an extensive review of existing items related to Human, Social and Decisional Capital was conducted, together with a careful examination of the key dimensions of professional capital presented by Andy Hargreaves’ and Michael Fullan in Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. An initial list of 60 items (20 Human Capital items, 20 Social Capital Items, and 20 Decisional Capital items) was produced and shared with over 12 experts to assess the relevance and clarity of the items. Expert feedback was used to gradually narrow down the number of items and enhance their clarity.
Reliability of Professional Capital Index. The professional capital items have been tested for reliability on two separate occasions. Reliability tests have been conducted for each sub-scale (Human Capital, Social Capital, and Decisional Capital) separately. Inter-item correlations between individual items were calculated and Cronbach’s Alpha values were computed and used as a measure of internal consistency – that is, how closely related items in each set were as a group. Inter-item correlations among all items in each subscale are positive. The three sub-scales in both the teacher and principal indexes show Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients higher than 0.7, which suggests high reliability (Conventionally, Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients higher than 0.7 are desirable).
Construct Validity refers to whether the measurements obtained index reflect the meaning of professional capital. The construct validity of the professional capital index has been tested in two major ways. The first the administration of the professional capital survey in two school districts – one with a long trajectory of improved performance and one in the first few years of its improvement journey. Human, social, and decisional capital scores were significantly higher in the high performing district than in the low performing one, suggesting that the index provides valid measures of professional capital. The second construct validity test was a Principal Components Analysis to test the final list of 36 professional capital items. The PCA reveals the existence of three factors capturing three dimensions of professional capital which, overall, correspond to the three sets of items that make the survey: Human Capital, Social Capital, and Decisional Capital.
What measures are in place to ensure privacy, anonymity and security of the information provided by survey respondents?
Dotted Rules. To prevent indirect identification of respondents in reporting of survey data, we have outlined rules to “dott” certain information pieces. We operate with mainly two rules. Firstly, results on questions with less than five respondent answers are dotted. Secondly, if there is one or several alternatives that contain only one or two respondent answers, these alternatives will be dotted.
Roles. The survey results portal is role-based. A role specifies who sees what. Every user account has attached to it one or several roles that regulates what this user have accesses to. Examples of roles are teacher, leader, administrator, etc.
Predetermined Answer Categories. The survey uses open text answer fields minimally. In these fields, respondents can fill in sensitive information that reveals something about an individual. That is why the vast majority of questions in the survey have predetermined answer categories. High-quality questions with predetermined answer categories have been devised to eliminate the possibility of unintended disclosure.
Data Storage. When the data collection is completed respondent information, such as email addresses, are either deleted or stored separate from the answer and question data.
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