In 2007 the European Ministers of Higher Education said in the London Communiqué that: "Higher education should play a strong role in fostering social cohesion, reducing inequalities and raising the level of knowledge, skills and competences in society”. According to the aim of contributing to the social dimension of the European Higher Education, the MAVACO project in which the present study is part, has been designed. Our model focuses on the definition of an Assesment Model for Social Cohesion (SC) (Jornet, 2010). In SC Assessment Model, Teacher Collegiality is defined as a factor that can stimulate educational improvement and offer a more coherent educational model for students.  

Currently, few European educational centers are characterized by collaborative work environment and high level of collegiality among teachers (García Llamas, 2005; Fernandez Tilve and Malvar, 1999). 

Based on previous research, there is not a common definition for Teacher Collegiality and there is a need to design a reliable instrument.  Thus, the objective of this study is to validate the definition of Teacher Collegiality dimension and design an instrument to assess it. 

We consider that Teacher Collegiality identifies the quality of union between individuals who work in a coordinated and collaborative way to accomplish a common goal or objective in educational settings. From this perspective, Teacher Collegiality dimension is built from three different concepts: members’ satisfaction with what they receive from the institution, members’ willingness to contribute the benefit of the other colleagues, and the organizational climate as a reflection of the school culture. 

In this way, we identified three sub-dimensions as part of Teacher Collegiality. The first sub-dimension is related to job satisfaction scale by Cetina, Aguilar and Ortega (2011), reducing the scale to those elements that may be relevant in the perception of satisfaction in a school. For the second sub-dimension, organizational commitment scale was adapted from González Such, Sánchez Delgado and Jornet (2011), scale that offers criteria like organizational, social and ethical commitment in the school. The organizational climate scale was adapted from Vasquez and Guadarrama (2001).

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