Research topic, aim and questions

Instructional leadership is one of the most frequently investigated models of school leadership (Bush & Glover, 2014; Gumus, Bellibas, Esen, & Gumus, 2016). Instructional leadership is broadly defined as leadership practices that either directly or indirectly influence student outcomes and instructional quality such as fostering positive learning environment, and defining and sharing school vision (Hallinger, 2005; Robinson, Lloyd, Rowe, 2008). The empirical research on instructional leadership originally commenced in the United States in the 1970s (e.g., Brookover & Lezotte, 1977; Weber, 1971). Beyond the original perspective of viewing a principal as a sole source of instructional leadership in a school, the concept has recently been interpreted to cover the roles of other instructional leaders such as vice-principals, teacher leaders, and external coaches (Neumerski, 2013). Despite extensive research, there remain significant areas of instructional leadership that merit further research. 

Firstly, the literature has stressed that being an instructional leader involves performing a multiplicity of roles such as setting goals, coordinating the curriculum, planning professional development, and promoting a positive learning climate (e.g., Hallinger, 2005). Often these roles are compounded by urgent matters and time constraints; therefore, even the most determined school leaders meet varied challenges to be active in all these roles (Hallinger, 2000). An emerging issue is whether there are some specific instructional leadership roles that may contribute higher impact on improving teachers’ instructional quality and student learning than others do. However, little empirical research has addressed this important issue (Grissom, Loeb, & Master, 2013; Neumerski, 2013; Sebastian & Allensworth, 2012). Discussion might be helpful in informing school leaders of the roles in which they should make greater investments. 

Secondly, the current knowledge base on instructional leadership has been predominantly derived from American-Anglo contexts. The empirical research on educational leadership and specifically instructional   leadership in non-US cultures (e.g., Asian cultures) remains modest (Bush, 2014; Hallinger & Bryant, 2013; Walker & Hallinger, 2015). Further exploring the phenomenon of instructional leadership in non-Western societies is necessary since school leadership is subject to the cultural, political, and societal factors (Hallinger, 2018). 

To redress these two gaps in the literature, the current empirical study was conducted to explore the enactment of instructional leadership of Singapore primary school leaders and specify the relationship between instructional leadership and teacher competences. This paper focuses on discussing two key research questions as follows. 

1. How do Singapore primary school leaders enact their instructional leadership, as perceived by key personnel and teachers in Singapore primary schools?

2. What is the possible relationship between instructional leadership and teacher competences, as perceived by key personnel and teachers in Singapore primary schools? 

Relevance to International/European Scope

The current study seeks to contribute to the growing international and comparative knowledge base on instructional leadership. This study would attract those international and European scholars who are interested in exploring evidence of instructional leadership practices in Singapore and the correlation between instructional leadership and teacher-related variables. Implications for research and practices would also be discussed in the paper, which hopes to inspire international/European researchers and practitioners with their future works. 

This paper reports part of the findings drawn from a larger study on school leadership in Singapore primary schools. There were totally 185 government and government-aided primary schools in Singapore (Ministry of Education Singapore, 2014) at the time of commencing this research. A group of 28 primary schools participated in this study. This sample represents Singapore government and government-aided primary schools in all four zones (i.e., North, South, East and West of the country. The participants included 225 key personnel (i.e., teachers with formal leadership positions such as head of department, subject head, or level head) and 468 teachers (i.e., subject/classroom teachers without a formal leadership position). On average, the teacher participants had 10.67 (SD = 8.79) years of teaching experience, and the key personnel had 8.00 (SD = 6.73) years of teaching experience. In addition to demographic questions (e.g., age, years of teaching experience, and leadership position for key personnel), both teachers and key personnel responded to items on perceived instructional leadership of their school leaders (i.e., principals and vice principals in charge of instruction and curriculum). In addition, teachers also responded to a set of items on teacher competence. All the items were rated on a five-point Likert Scale (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree). Two scales used in this study are: instructional leadership and teacher competence. ‘Instructional leadership’ scale measures four dimensions of instructional roles of school leaders: • aligning teaching practices to school vision; • leading curriculum and teaching; • developing a positive climate for teaching and learning; and • promoting professional development. ‘Teacher competence’ scale measures four dimensions that are: • curriculum content competence; • pedagogical competence; • assessment competence; and • knowledge on student learning. Rasch analysis was first conducted with each dimension of IL and TC for teachers and key personnel separately, identify and discard misfit items and persons. Rasch scores were then used for statistical analysis (incl. ANNOVA, Pearson correlation, and hierarchical regression) to answer the two aforementioned research questions.

The descriptive analysis and ANNOVA tests indicate that Singapore school leaders were involved in all investigated dimensions of instructional leadership to varying degrees. These school leaders were involved the least in the area of leading curriculum and teaching. Key personnel tended to rate their school leaders’ enactment of instructional leadership higher than classroom/subject teachers did. To explore the possible relationship between instructional leadership and teacher competences, the tests of Pearson correlation and hierarchical regression were run. Generally, there was a correlation between instructional leadership and teacher competences. The hierarchical regression offered a more detailed elaboration of this relationship. The instructional leadership dimensions of “developing a positive climate for teaching and learning” and “promoting professional development” were significant predictors of three dimensions (i.e., curriculum competence, pedagogical competence, and assessment competence) of teacher competences. Noticeably, “developing a positive climate for teaching and learning” was the only significant predictor of teachers’ knowledge on student learning. As for demographic variables, teaching experience was the only predictor of teacher competences, with an exception of teachers’ curriculum competence. The paper provides both a confirmation of previous works and new contributions to the literature. It highlights the empirical evidence from Singapore primary schools on how school leaders enacted instructional leadership. Singapore school leaders chose to invest more efforts in aligning teaching practices to school vision and promoting teacher professional development activities and a positive school climate, whereas they were less active in directly leading classroom instruction and curriculum. While the paper confirms the international literature on the positive relationship between instructional leadership and teacher-level variables (e.g., Ham & Kim, 2015; Heck & Moriyama, 2010), its new contribution lies in specifying this relationship using empirical evidence. The authors will highlight the key implications of this study in the presentation.

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