Development and Validation of the Spiritual Meaning-Centred Leadership Scale Among Turkish Secondary School Teachers

This study presents the development and initial validation of the Spiritual Meaning-Centred Leadership Scale (SMCLS), a measure of the degree to which school principals cultivate meaning, purpose, human dignity, and spiritual well-being at work. Spiritual leadership and workplace spirituality have often been linked to meaningful work, employee well-being, and reduced burnout, yet most available instruments were developed in Western corporate or military settings and rarely reflect the meaning-centred, humanistic character of leadership in schools. An initial pool of 20 items was developed based on spiritual leadership theory and the workplace spirituality literature and administered to secondary school teachers in Türkiye via an open online survey, for which a precise response rate cannot be calculated. Exploratory factor analysis (n = 512) produced a single-factor solution of 15 items that accounted for 58.83% of the total variance, with loadings between .64 and .85. Confirmatory factor analysis on a separate sample (n = 286) supported the one-factor model, with χ2/df = 3.00, CFI = .969, TLI = .960, and RMSEA = .063. Reliability was high, with Cronbach's α = .949, McDonald's ω = .950, and a three-week test-retest correlation of r = .84 (n = 34, p < .001). Scale scores from a subsample of 39 teachers showed a moderate positive correlation with spiritual robustness (r = .528, p < .01), supporting criterion-related validity. The SMCLS provides researchers with a sound and culturally appropriate way to study how school leaders nurture meaning and spiritual resources, with relevance to work on teacher well-being and school improvement.