Abstract

Students’ perceptions of teachers as authority figures affect teaching-learning processes. This quantitative instrumental study encompasses the design and assessment of the psychometric properties of a Likert scale (the Scale of Pedagogical Authority Meanings in the Classroom –ESAPA) that examines these perceptions. The scale underwent an expert assessment and was applied to 913 university students from four Ibero-American countries. After the factor analyses, the goodness-of-fit indices revealed that the four-factor correlated model fitted the data well. Thus, the scale is a reliable instrument to spot the meanings attributed to pedagogical authority.