Silva, José CastroFerreira, MarcoPacheco, PatríciaAlmeida, Ana Patrícia2023-09-252023-09-252023-09Castro Silva J, Ferreira M, Pacheco P and Almeida A (2023) School leadership engagement: validation of the Portuguese version of UWES scale. Front. Educ. 8:1217806. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2023.1217806http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/14988The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) is a widely used self-report scale with the original twenty-three items and its abbreviated version of nine items to assess workers’ engagement. This paper reports a validation study of the UWES-17 and UWES-9 using confirmatory factor analysis, its convergent validity and invariance across gender in a sample of 921 Portuguese school leaders. The main findings support a bidimensional conceptualization of work engagement measurement. The Portuguese version of UWES-9 is proposed as a reliable and robust (CFI = 0.97; TLI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.073) tool to assess work engagement amongst Portuguese school leadership. The 9-item UWES is a reliable instrument to assess work engagement among Portuguese school leaders and could be used as an effective screening tool in educational contexts.engWork engagementUWES scaleSchool leadershipAssessmentConfirmatory factor analysisjournal article10.3389/feduc.2023.1217806