Interactive Effect of School principals’ Leadership Styles and Teacher Characteristics on Curriculum Implementation at Public Secondary Schools of Punjab

Abstract

The research was conducted in the positivist paradigm to determine the interactive effect of school principals' leadership style and the teaching characteristics (traditional Vs. Progressive) of school teachers on curriculum implementation. The research further explores how teaching characteristics mediate between school principals' leadership style and curriculum implementation. Higher secondary school teachers' perceptions were collected from 600 teachers teaching at secondary schools in six districts of Punjab. Multistage sampling was used to draw a sample from a large and diverse population. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to determine the relationship among various constructs leadership styles, teacher characteristics, and strategies used for the curriculum implementation at secondary schools of Punjab. Path analysis using Structure Equation Modeling with AMOS yielded unique relationships among leadership styles of school principals and teacher characteristics for curriculum implementation. Democratic style of school principals was found to exert maximum direct influence on curriculum implementation with no teacher characteristics mediation. However, it is found that both teacher characteristics play a significant mediating role in curriculum implementation; the visionary style was best mediated through progressive characteristics, and 2) commanding style was mediated through traditional characteristics. The research draws attention to existing gaps in developing teacher expertise for curriculum implementation, which need to be addressed to prepare future teacher leadership in Pakistan.