Leadership in school context: how servant leadership characteristics of school principals empower teachers

Author(s):

Khalil Gholami(presenting / submitting)Shahin Asadi(presenting)Sara Hajizade Atoosa Moradi

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 01 A,

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-13

13:15-14:45

Room:

JK 25/132,G, 20

Chair:

Helen Wildy

Contribution

Servant leadership theory was origially founded by Greenleaf. According to Greenleaf (1977), servant leader ship begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first, and then learn to lead as a servant (cited in Patterson, 2003). Servant leadership is considered as a leadership style in which the leader priorities the organizational purpose, needs, and the needs of followers over the needs and desire of himself (Woodruff, 2004). Drawing on Patterson (2003 cited in Dennis & Bocarnea, 2005) we studeid servant leadership comprising six constructs: Agapao love refers to deep feeling that causes leaders to love their staff for the sake of themselves not just as means to an end. Humility deals with a kind of behaviors that leaders have a fair and accurate self-assessment in connection with their staff. Altruism concerns with helping leaders offer for staff for the sake of good embedded in the helping itself and not to gain something for the leaders. Vision means seeing the needs of future to change and develop the current situations. Trust passes on the enhancing moral and professional confidence between leaders and staff. Service is central to servant leadership and means having strong commitment to other people in the organization.

Considering these characteristics, in school context servant leadership have been found to have positive effect on employee’s job satisfaction (Estep, 2000 ; Dono – Koulouris, 2003; Nir & Kranot, 2006). Also, servant leader ship has an effect on employees’ self efficacy (Nixson, 2005). Servant leadership, however, is understudied in the school context and in regarding to the teachers. This study, examined the link between the servant leadership behaviors of the school principals and teachers’ empowerment. In order to meet this task, we particularly addressed this research question:

- To what extent was the teachers’ perceived empowerment associated with the servant leadership behaviors of the school principals?

- How do teachers’ perceive servant leadership in the school context?

Method

We used a mixed method approach in this study. In the quantitative phase, using Servant Leadership Scale developed by Dennis and Bocarnea (2005), data were collected from 173 teachers of high school (grades-10-12). In this stage, teacher empowerment was also studied with scale developed and standardized by Hazrati (2008). Both questionniare were 50 items on a Likert scale (totally agree to totally disagree). These questionaires were used to measure the servant leadership behaviors of school principals and percieved teachers’ empowerment. In the seocns pahse, we interviewed teachers to see how they think about the servant leadership in order to understand the nature of this leadership in the school context, particularly to see how realistic it could be as a leadership style in schools.

Expected Outcomes

In the quantitative phase, mean, standard deviation, correlation and multi-regression test was used in data analysis. In general, strong positive relationship was revealed between servant leadership behaviors of school principals and teachers’ perceived empowerment: servant leadership was a significant predictor of teachers’ perceived empowerment (r=0/82; R²= 0/68; p≤0/01). This shows that about 68% variation of the teachers’ perceived empowerment was predicted by the servant leadership behaviors of school leaders. The partial correlations between constructs of servant leadership with the teachers’ perceived empowerment suggested that trust (r=0/26; p≤0/01), vision (r=0/35; p≤0/01), and service (r= -0/16; p≤0/01) have statistically significant association with the teachers’ perceived empowerment. The other constructs failed to show a significant relationship with teachers’ empowerment. These results were consistent with other empirical studies. However, it was unexpected that service had a negative significant association with the teachers’ perceived empowerment. We should point out that the qualitative phase of this study is still in progress to gain more insight into the topic. This part of the findings will be presented in main conference and included in the full paper.

References

Dennis, R. S & Bocarnea, M. (2005). Development of servant leadership assessment instrument. Leadership and organizational development journal, 26 (8), 600- 615 Dono- Koulouris, M.J. (2003). Leadership style, teacher empowerment, satisfaction in selected catholic elementary schools. Ph.D. dissertation: st. john’s university Estep, T.A.(2000). A study of the relationship between transformational leadership, transactional leadership and specified demographic factors as enablers of teacher empowerment in rural Pennsylvania school districts in Appalachia intermediate unit 8: Ph.D. dissertation Greenleaf, R. K.(1977). Servant leadership: A journey in to nature of legitimate power and greatnes. Paulist press, Mahwah, NT.(books.google.com). Nixson, M.M. (2005) ‘The Servant Leader ship: Followership Continuum from a Social Psychology Cognitive Perspective’, Servant Leader ship Roundtable. Virginia Beach, VA: Regent University. Available at: http://www.regent.edu/acad/sls/Servant Leadership Roundtable. Nir, A. E. & Kranot, N. (2006). School principal’s leadership style and teacher s’ self-efficacy. Academy research library, 37( 382), 205- 218. Patterson, K. (2003). Servant leadership: Atheorical model. Ph.D. dissertation: Regent university Woodruff, T.R. (2004) ‘Executive Pastors’ Perception of Leader ship and Management Competencies Needed for Local Church Administration’, Dissertation Abstracts International 3128851.

Author Information

Khalil Gholami (presenting / submitting)

UNIVERSITY OF KURDISTAN

Sanandaj

Shahin Asadi (presenting)

University of Uromia

kamyaran

Sara Hajizade

UNIVERSITY OF KURDISTAN, Iran, Islamic Republic of

Atoosa Moradi

University of Ghazvin

Tehran

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