Session Information
26 SES 01 B, Leadership, Organization and Context
Paper Session
Contribution
Current trends in the globalized environment we live in, and especially the persisting burden of the global economic crisis, require school principals to adopt a broader set of roles and tasks. This study is concerned with a comprehensive perspective of leadership by utilizing and concentrating on the Holistic Leadership Framework (Brauckmann & Pashiardis, 2011; Pashiardis, 2014; Pashiardis & Brauckmann, 2008). The specific framework has been developed and validated in secondary schools in seven European countries (UK, Norway, Germany, Slovenia, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands) within the context of the European funded LISA (Leadership Improvement for Student Achievement) project. More recently, the framework has been validated in Cyprus as well both in primary and secondary schools (Pashiardis, 2014). According to this framework, school principals’ behavior is operationalized in terms of five leadership styles: the Instructional, Participative, Structuring, Entrepreneurial, and Personnel Development Styles. The specific framework constitutes a significant reference base for conceptualizing and measuring leadership providing at the same time support to integrated forms of leadership (Scheerens, 2012).
This research study seeks to explore the influence of key organizational and contextual variables on school leadership practice and behavior as operationalized by the aforementioned Pashiardis-Brauckmann framework. At the organizational level, a latent construct labeled School Academic Optimism (Hoy et al., 2006; McGuigan,& Hoy, 2006) has been included in the initial conceptual framework. School Academic Optimism represents a school wide belief that students will learn and it is made up of three dimensions: academic emphasis, faculty trust in students and parents, and teacher collective efficacy. The specific organizational variable has been previously found to be shaped by school leadership (Mascall et al., 2008) but no study has yet examined the effect of academic optimism on school leadership.
Moreover, this study also incorporates key contextual variables as potential predictors of school leadership. According to Schwarz and Brauckmann (2015), little is known about the contextual conditions of schools and especially with respect to their impact on leadership activities. According to Hallinger (2005), “the context of the school is a source of constraints, resources and opportunities that the principal must understand and address in order to lead.” (p.14). These conditions embrace school context characteristics (i.e. school size, school location, number of immigrant students) and individual characteristics of the school principal (i.e. gender). For example, previous studies showed that a more instructional style was enacted at primary and smaller schools (Hallinger & Murphy, 1985, Heck, 1992). In addition, previous research (e.g. Hallinger et al. 1996) showed that female principals engaged themselves more in instructional leadership than male principals whereas more recent studies do not indicate any differences between male and female leadership styles (Barbuto et al., 2007). The examination of school leadership styles against the contextual background level enables the assessment of school leaders not as isolated entities but as ones dependent on concrete contextual conditions (Schwarz & Brauckmann, 2015).
Overall, this study seeks to answer the following research questions:
- What is the effect of school academic optimism on school leadership, as defined by the Pashiardis-Brauckmann holistic framework?
- What is the effect of the principal gender on school leadership?
- What is the effect of school contextual variables, i.e. school size, school location, number of immigrant students, on school leadership?
The aforementioned research questions enable research to assess the organizational and contextual factors which might impact school leadership. Since school leaders do not operate in an abstract context it is important to identify any predictors which might be utilized to enhance leadership practice.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Barbuto, J.E., Fritz, S.M., Matkin, G.S., & Marx, D.B. (2007). Effects of gender, education and age upon leader’s use of influence tactics and full range leadership behaviours. Sex Roles, 56, pp. 71-83. Brauckmann, S., & Pashiardis, P. (2011). A Validation Study of the Leadership Styles of a Holistic Leadership Theoretical Framework. International Journal of Educational Management, 25 (1), 11-32. Hallinger, P. (2005). Instructional Leadership and the School Principal: A Passing Fancy that Reduces to Fade Away. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 4, 1-20. Hallinger, P., Bickman, L. & Davis, K. (1996). School Context, Principal Leadership, and Student Reading Achievement. The Elementary School Journal, 96 (5), 527-549. Hallinger, P., & Murphy, J. (1985). Assessing the instructional management behavior of principals. The Elementary School Journal, 86 (2), pp. 217-47. Heck, R. (1992). Principal Instructional Leadership and the Identification of High- and Low-Achieving Schools. The Application of Discriminant Techniques. Administrator`s Notebook, 34, pp. 1-4. Hoy, W.K., Tarter, C.J., & Woolfolk Hoy, A.W. (2006). Academic optimism of schools:a force for student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 43 (3), 425-446. Mascall, B., Leithwood, K., Straus,T., & Sacks, R. (2008). The relationship between distributed leadership and teachers’ academic optimism. Journal of Educational Administration, 46 (2), 214-228. McGuigan, L., & Hoy, W.K. (2006). Principal leadership: creating a culture of academic optimism to improve achievement for all students. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 5 (3), 203-229. Pashiardis, P., & Brauckmann, S. (2008, November). Introduction to the LISA Framework from a Social System’s Perspective. Paper presented at the LISA Conference, Budapest, Hungary. Pashiardis, P. (Ed.). (2014). Modeling School Leadership Across Europe. In search of New Frontiers. The Netherlands: Springer. Scheerens, J. (2012). Summary and Conclusion: Instructional Leadership in Schools as Loosely Coupled Organizations. In J. Scheerens (Ed), School Leadership Effects Revisited. Review and Meta-analysis of Empirical Studies (pp.131-151). The Netherlands: Springer. Schwarz, A. & Brauckmann, S. (2015). Schumpeter Discussion Papers. Between facts and perceptions: The area close to school as a context factor in school leadership. Schumpeter School of Business and Economics.
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