Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Second-Order Structure of the Attitude towards the Pedagogical Formation of Prospective Teachers Inventory: Evidence from a Standardisation Study in Tripura, India

attitude, pedagogical formation, prospective teachers, confirmatory factor analysis, second-order factor model, teacher education, India

Attitudes formed during initial teacher preparation shape how prospective teachers engage with their pedagogical formation and, ultimately, how they teach. This study examined the factorial validity and higher-order structure of the Attitude towards the Pedagogical Formation of Prospective Teachers Inventory, a 32-item measure comprising four dimensions: Professional Commitment and Value, Child-Centred and Instructional Practices, Relevance and Necessity of the Programme, and Personal Efficacy and Adaptability. The inventory was administered to 345 prospective teachers drawn by proportionate simple random sampling from a population of 1410 trainees enrolled in eight teacher education institutions of Tripura, India. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that all 32 items loaded significantly on their intended factors (p < .001), and the four-factor model achieved a reasonable approximate fit, with RMSEA = .076 and SRMR = .053, although the comparative fit indices remained below conventional thresholds (CFI = .823, TLI = .808). The four factors were very strongly intercorrelated (r = .815 to .913), so a second-order model was tested in which the four dimensions loaded on a general attitude factor. The second-order model fitted the data as well as the correlated-factors model and clearly better than a single-factor model. All four standardised second-order loadings were high and significant, with Personal Efficacy and Adaptability emerging as the most influential dimension of the general attitude construct (γ = .952), followed closely by Relevance and Necessity of the Programme (γ = .945) and Child-Centred and Instructional Practices (γ = .943), while Professional Commitment and Value contributed comparatively least (γ = .900). Implications for teacher education practice and for further refinement of the inventory are discussed.