Inclusive Leadership and Education Quality: Adaptation and Validation of the Questionnaire “Inclusive Leadership in Schools” (LEI-Q) to the Italian Context

Abstract

The United Nations Sustainable Development Programme for 2030 has established the principles of sustainable action for today’s society, one of which is to achieve quality and more inclusive education. Our society has reached the stage where quality education is no longer a privilege of a few, but a fundamental right. Therefore, not achieving quality education is equivalent to not having had the opportunity to grow and develop as fully as one is entitled to in a free and just society, which needs inclusive leadership. The objective in this study is the validation of the instrument “Inclusive Leadership in Schools” for the Italian context. The methods used are content validity through expert judgement; construct validity through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis; and reliability through Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and the split-half method. The results reveal that both the version for school administrators and teachers and the version for families have optimal levels of validity and reliability for measuring the degree of inclusive leadership in Italian schools. The results suggest that inclusive leadership effects are expected to operate most closely via their influence on developing the improvement of teaching and learning quality and promoting a favourable school climate and culture that emphasize high expectations and quality education.