Principals’ Leadership and School Success: The Direct and Mediated Impacts of Principals’ Instructional Leadership Behaviors on School Success

Examining the Impact of Principals' Instructional Leadership on School Success in Secondary Schools

Abstract

Albeit there is a strong conviction that principals’ leadership has an impact on teachers and students, both the nature and extent of its effect continues to be open to debate. In this article, thus, it was planned to examine the nature and extent of principals’ instructional leadership effects on school success in a sample of 30 randomly selected general secondary schools situated in Amhara national regional state, Ethiopia. To attain this purpose, the researcher tested models hypothesizing that principal’s instructional leadership contribute to school success both directly and indirectly. A sample of 372 teacher respondents were participated in the study using proportionally stratified random sampling procedure, apart from 54 principals who were included comprehensively. Survey questionnaires for teachers and principals and school success, measured by school level average academic achievement results of students were used to examine the hypothesized models. The results demonstrated that principal instructional leadership behavior had both direct and mediated effects on school success. Albeit the effects were found to be very small in both tested models (direct and mediated effects), the effects of principals instructional leadership behavior on school success were estimated to be significantly positive. The significant direct effect was found to be via only promoting positive school learning climate dimension of instructional leadership. The present study also provided evidence for partial mediation. Specifically, the path from principals’ instructional leadership behavior to school success was partially mediated by school academic optimism. That is, schools with higher instructional leadership practice had higher school academic optimism and this in turn has a substantial positive contribution for better school success. In general, the study results by and large confirmed the notion that principals’ instructional leadership behaviors play an important role in school success both directly and indirectly. Hence, it is imperative to put forward that promoting positive school learning climate and school academic optimism are the possible intervention areas for school leaders in order to enhance school success in general secondary schools.