Effective principal leadership practices as perceived by teachers in schools demonstrating continuous student academic improvement

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate effective principal leadership behaviors as perceived by teachers in schools demonstrating continuous student academic improvement. The principal leadership behaviors, which were based on transformational leadership theory, were (1) provides vision, (2) models appropriate behavior, (3) fosters commitment to goals, (4) provides individualized support, (5) provides intellectual stimulation, and (6) holds high expectations. Continuous student academic improvement was defined as improved scores on the Stanford 9 Achievement Test for a cohort of students over a three-year period. The Principal Leadership Questionnaire (PLQ) (Valentine & Lucas, 2000) was administered to teachers in six schools which had demonstrated continuous student academic improvement. Focus groups were conducted with teachers in three of the six schools to define further the leadership behaviors they observed in their principals. The following conclusions were based on the findings of this study. (1) Teachers in schools demonstrating high continuous student academic improvement rated their principals significantly higher on all six transformational leadership behaviors than teachers in the medium and low continuous student academic improvement schools. (2) Principals who were strong in one of the principal leadership behaviors were strong in the other principal leadership behaviors. (3) All of the principal leadership behaviors were correlated with the school's academic gains. The correlations indicated that schools with high mean gains all had high mean teacher ratings. (4) Teachers in the high CSAI school identified more examples of how their principal modeled the six transformational leadership behaviors than did teachers in the medium CSAI and the low CSAI schools. These six transformational leadership behaviors, first identified by Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, and Fetter (1990) in their review of research, were expanded by Leithwood, Tomlinson, and Genge (1996) to provide indicators of each specific behavior. Principals who have a goal of increasing and maintaining high levels of student academic achievement should focus their day-to-day actions on modeling and emphasizing these transformational leadership behaviors. The findings of this study could be utilized to assist principals in ensuring that they demonstrate the transformational leadership behaviors identified by teachers in the schools demonstrating high continuous student academic improvement.