The mediating roles of internal context variables in the relationship between distributed leadership perceptions and continuous change behaviours of public school teachers

Abstract

This study aims at building a theoretical base for continuous change in education and using this base to test the mediating roles of two key contextual variables, knowledge sharing and trust, in the relationship between the distributed leadership perceptions and continuous change behaviours of teachers. Data were collected from 687 public school teachers. The results showed that the combined effect of knowledge sharing and faculty trust in principal mediated the relationship between teachers’ distributed leadership perceptions and continuous change behaviours. The directions of the coefficients of the relationships between the independent variable and the dependent variable suggested that higher distributed leadership perception leads to increased knowledge sharing and trust in principal, which in turn was associated with greater continuous change behaviours. The study showed that school systems have an extensive capacity for self-improvement, even in the absence of a pre-developed change plan.

Keywords:

• Continuous change
• distributed leadership
• organisational trust
• knowledge sharing
• public school teachers
• mediation study