Disentangling school leadership and its ties to instructional practices – an empirical comparison of various leadership styles

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the direct and indirect ties between various leadership styles, namely, instructional, transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership, and the instructional practices of teachers by applying a structural equation model. For this purpose, we analyzed survey data of n = 3,746 teachers from 126 schools collected by the Hamburg school inspection in Germany between 2012 and 2015. The underlying model is based on Leithwood’s framework for guiding research on leader effects on learning and instruction. First, the results show that a bi-factor model seems to be the best measurement model. Next, it is shown that mediating variables are influenced by a leadership core as well as by different leadership facets. Third, we found that for influencing complex instructional practices like cognitive activation with challenging content, a combination of leadership styles is most promising, while for classroom management instructional leadership is the only and, thus, the primary determinant.

KEYWORDS:

• Bi-factor model
• instructional leadership
• instructional practices
• school leadership
• transformational leadership

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In contrast to the other scales, the differences of alpha and omega reliability are strikingly large. The omega reliability of structure and classroom management was ω = .62, the omega reliability of supportive, student-oriented classroom climate was ω = .73, and the omega reliability of cognitive activation with challenging content was ω = .82. Thus, between 62 and 82% of the factor-specific variance is attributable to the particular indicators. As the internal consistency as measured by coefficient alpha refers to the homogeneity of the items in the measure or the extent to which item responses correlate with the total test score of the dimension of instructional practice, the aforementioned mediocre internal consistency of coefficient alpha points towards the instability of the traits as measured by the particular items. However, one would expect some degree of cross loadings because the factors are conceptually related (Hamre, Hatfield, Pianta, & Jamil, 2014). In such cases, the reliability of the scales may be dramatically underestimated by coefficient alpha (Graham, 2006), whereas coefficient omega will lead to a more accurate correction (Revelle & Zinbarg, 2009). In our sample, 12 out of 13 items were significantly loading (p < 0.05) on more than one dimension. Thus, because of the multidimensional data, coefficient omega (ω) by McDonald (1999) can be considered a more accurate measure of reliability for the three scales measuring instructional practices.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marcus Pietsch

Marcus Pietsch is a senior researcher at the Institute for Education Monitoring Hamburg and currently holds a postdoctoral scholarship in Empirical Educational Research awarded by the Leuphana University Lueneburg in Germany. His main research interests include accountability, educational as well as teacher effectiveness, and data-driven school improvement, primarily with a focus on measurement and modeling issues. He is a chair of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) Methods of Researching Educational Effectiveness (MoRE) network.

Pierre Tulowitzki

Pierre Tulowitzki is an assistant professor and the head of the Department of International Educational Leadership and Management at the Ludwigsburg University of Education in Germany. He is the German director of the accredited international Master program “International Education Management”, a joint program of the Ludwigsburg University and the Helwan University, Egypt. His research interests include educational leadership, school improvement and accountability, and educational change. He is a member of the board of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI).