Session Information
26 SES 05 B, Research on School Leadership Styles
Paper Session
Contribution
The field of educational research has been populated by a myriad of leadership styles and models of leadership with instructional leadership and transformational leadership being two of the more popular ones in the educational discourse. Empirical evidence indicates effects of both leadership styles on student learning as well as on learning preconditions within schools. In their groundbreaking review Hallinger and Heck (1998) stated that principals influence student achievement mainly indirectly. More recent reviews (e.g. Leithwood & Jantzi, 2008, Scheerens et al., 2012) support this result and demonstrate that effective leadership behavior is mediated mainly by a) influencing the academic climate, b) optimizing the professional capacity as well as cooperation and commitment of the staff, c) building organizational capacity and d) influencing instructional conditions.
In order to describe these relations, educational researchers usually link two different leadership styles with mediating variables: 1) instructional leadership with first order variables which are likely to promote a productive teaching and learning climate and 2) transformational leadership with second order variables, which more explicitly focus on organization and people development (e.g. Scheerens et al., 2012). Nonetheless most empirical studies up to now focus solely on one of these types of leadership; there are only few empirical studies taking into account both styles in a single model, making it difficult to identify their relational impact on different variables (e.g. Shatzer et al. 2013).
For example, Robinson et al. (2008) compared leadership styles in a meta-analysis and found that the effect size for instructional leadership on student achievement (r =.42) was nearly four times as high as of transformational leadership (r=.11). Day, Gu and Sammons (2016) looked at the impact of leadership practices on student outcomes using a mixed-methods design. The quantitative portion of the study employed a structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis with data from 309 secondary schools and 363 primary schools. Regarding leadership, they found “neither instructional leadership strategies nor transformational leadership strategies alone were sufficient to promote improvement identified by the SEM model” (Day et al., 2016, p. 238). Instead, they found successful principals to employ “layered leadership” consisting of strategies and actions that were both transformational and instructional (Day et al., 2016, p. 245).
Thus, leadership is on the one hand rarely modelled as unitary or holistic construct. However, according to one of such rare integrated analyses conducted by Marks and Printy (2003) school leaders should be both transformational and instructional leaders. In addition, intermediate variables with regard to teaching are included in a small number of studies (e.g. Thoonen et al., 2011) and researchers tend to develop their own measures, with the results that there are only few well-researched and validated instruments around to measure the leadership variables (e.g Scheerens et al., 2012).
The present study tries to fill the reported research gaps by evaluating the relational impact of instructional and transformational leadership on teaching practices. Drawing on a framework by Leithwood et al. (2002, 2008) variations in the success of leadership behavior are explained in terms of their influence on teachers’ motivation and capacities as well as their working conditions that facilitate changes in school and finally their teaching practices.
As more and more European countries move towards adopting measures to emphasize instructional leadership (Vieluf, Kaplan, Klieme, & Bayer, 2012; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2009, p. 189-205), a thorough analysis can help provide empirical evidence for the merits (or lack thereof) of such a development.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Anderson, J., & Gerbing, D. (1988). Structural equation modeling in practice: A review and recommended two-step approach. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 411–423. Bass, B. M. & Avolio, B. J. (1995). MLQ: Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Technical report. Redwood City: Mind Garden. Chen, F. F., Hayes, A., Carver, C. S., Laurenceau, J.-P., & Zhang, Z. (2012). Modeling general and specific variance in multifaceted constructs. Journal of Personality 80, 219–251. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum. Day, C., Gu, Q., & Sammons, P. (2016). The Impact of Leadership on Student Outcomes. Educational Administration Quarterly, 52(2), 221–258. Hallinger, P., & Heck, R. H. (1998). Exploring the principal’s contribution to school effectiveness: 1980-1995. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 9, 157-191. Leithwood, K., & Jantzi, D. (2008). Linking leadership to student learning: The contributions of Leader efficacy. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44, 496–528. Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2008). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership. School Leadership and Management, 28, 27-42. Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D., & Mascall, B. (2002). A framework for research on large-scale reform. Journal of Educational Change, 3, 7 – 33. Marks, H. M. & Printy, S. M. (2003). Principal leadership and school performance: An integration of transformational and instructional leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 39, 370-397. OECD (2009). Creating effective teaching and learning environments: First results from the OECD TALIS. Paris: OECD. O‘Boyle, E. Jr. & Williams, L. J. (2011). Decomposing model fit: Measurement vs. theory in organizational research using latent variables. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96, 1-12. Robinson, V. M. J., Lloyd, C. A., & Rowe, K. J. (2008). The Impact of Leadership on Student Outcomes: An Analysis of the Differential Effects of Leadership Types. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44(5), 635–674. Scheerens, J. (2012). School leadership effects revisited: Review and meta-analyses of empirical studies. Dordrecht: Springer. Shatzer, R. H., Caldarella, P., Hallam, P. R., & Brown, B. L. (2014). Comparing the effects of instructional and transformational leadership on student achievement. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 42(4), 445–459. Thoonen, E. E. J., Sleegers, P. J. C., Oort, F. J., Peetsma, T. T. D., & Geijsel, F. P. (2011). How to improve teaching practices: The role of teacher motivation, organizational factors, leadership practices. Educational Administration Quarterly, 47, 496–536. Vieluf, S., Kaplan, D., Klieme, E., & Bayer, S. (2012). Teaching Practices and Pedagogical Innovations: Evidence from TALIS. OECD Publishing.
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