PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP & TEACHER COMMITMENT

Principal Leadership & Teacher Commitment



Abstract

The present study explores the relation between distributed leadership and teachers' organizational commitment. Semi-structured interviews with teachers and school leaders of secondary schools were conducted. A comparative analysis of four schools with high and four schools with low committed teachers was carried out. Findings revealed differences in the leadership practices which influenced organizational commitment. The leadership practices include the quality and distribution of leadership functions, social interaction, cooperation of the leadership team, and participative decision-making. Teachers reported being more strongly committed to the school if the leaders were highly accessible, tackled problems efficiently or empowered teachers to participate, and frequently monitored teachers' daily practices.

Principal Leadership & Teacher Commitment

Chapter I: Introduction

Organizational commitment is a powerful predictor of teacher effectiveness (Dee, Henkin, & Singleton, 2006). Committed teachers have greater job effort and involvement, and are less likely to leave their positions and display other withdrawal behaviours, such as absenteeism (Singh & Billingsley, 1998). Also Firestone and Pennell (1993) claimed that organizational commitment is a critical predictor of teachers' job performance, as commitment is necessary for teachers to have the motivation to professionalize and pursue changes in their practice while dealing with the complex demands these changes present. Research showed that the organizational commitment of employees is positively related to organizational leadership practices (Meyer & Allen, 1997). This is also the case in the educational context (Nguni, Sleegers, & Denessen, 2006). However, previous research examining the relation between school leadership and teachers' organizational commitment is restricted to the traditional 'superhero' leadership model, which holds that leading a school is a one-person business. Due to the increased complexity in the educational system, and especially in large secondary schools, it becomes probable that no one individual has all the knowledge, skills, and abilities that would enable him/her to accomplish all of the leadership functions, without distributing them among a team. A post-heroic leadership model has been developed (Conger & Pearce, 2003). In this model leadership is seen as a group-level phenomenon where leadership is distributed among the school team. Although distributed leadership is the new kid on the block (Gronn, 2003) and is currently en vogue (Harris, 2008), empirical research exploring distributed leadership from a descriptive perspective and examining the relation with school effectiveness and school improvement is still in its infancy. Hargreaves and Fink (2006) stated that the educational leadership literature is characterized by blind spots about the nature and necessity of distributed leadership. In the present study we explore the nature of distributed leadership and examine how differences in distributed leadership in schools might relate to teachers' organizational commitment by using a qualitative design. Based on a previous quantitative study, we selected four high potential schools, where teachers' organizational commitment is high, and four low potential schools, where teachers' organizational commitment is low. In these two types of schools we compared the quality and distribution of two core leadership functions (i.e., supporting and supervising teachers). We further examine the cooperation of the leadership team, social interaction, and ...