Abstract
In the article, the relations between the principal’s instructional leadership, school culture, psychological empowerment, job characteristics, and teachers’ work engagement was examined on a sample of 310 elementary school teachers. The results showed no direct effects of the principal’s instructional leadership on work engagement; however, they proved the belief that the principal could have an indirect effect on teachers’ work engagement through indirect variables: school culture, teacher empowerment, and job characteristics. The research method is structural equation modelling, for the purpose of which five research tools (the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale, the School Culture Survey, the Job Diagnostic Survey, the Psychological Empowerment Questionnaire, and the Job Engagement Questionnaire) were used for data collection. The participants were selected through a stratified sampling method. The reliability was assessed by Cronbach’s alpha. The results showed that the model fitted the data and that the relationship between instructional leadership and job engagement was established entirely through school culture, empowerment, and the job characteristics of teachers. The principals are recommended to apply the instructional leadership approach. By assisting teachers in collaboration, instilling collective leadership, and communicating a shared vision, the principals can contribute to developing a positive and participatory school culture.
Highlights
Leadership is one of the most studied topics in the organisation sciences, and employee engagement one of the more recent
The results showed that instructional leadership had a positive, direct and statistically significant influence on school culture (H2), job characteristics (H3), and psychological empowerment (H4) but not on work engagement (H1)
The analysis of results identified that instructional leadership had a positive association with work engagement the direct relation between them was non-significant in the model and the first hypothesis was not supported, but the total effect is completely due to mediating variables indicating their full role between the two
Summary
Leadership is one of the most studied topics in the organisation sciences, and employee engagement one of the more recent. Leadership has increasingly been perceived as a critical factor in organisational as well as school effectiveness. The increased interest in instructional leadership evidenced over recent decades is due to the trend of continuous reforms of education systems throughout the world. These changes have led to a dramatic growth in the importance of the role assigned to school leaders, both individually and collectively (Hallinger & Huber, 2012). According to Hallinger and Heck (1996), studies yielded frequent instances of positive findings concerning the role of the principal in school effectiveness
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