Leadership and School Culture of Mainstream and Special Primary Schools

Abstract

Different leadership models as well as leadership skills are of interest to both the research area and the school environment. More specifically, in recent years, school leadership and school culture have been studied as two interrelated parameters of school units. The purpose of the study reported here was to investigate the relationship between the leadership of mainstream and special primary schools in terms of Extra Effort, Effectiveness and Satisfaction and their correlation with the dimension of School Culture. Another goal of the study was to examine the influence of specific demographic variables on the key factors of Leadership and School Culture. The sample consisted of 526 primary school teachers working in primary schools (PS) across Greece: 120 Headteachers/Assistant Headteachers of mainstream PS, 106 Headteachers /Assistant Headteachers of Special PS, 150 teachers of mainstream PS and 150 teachers of Special PS. The participants completed the Multifactoral Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Avolio & Bass, 2004) and the Questionnaire for School Culture (SCEQ) (Cavanagh & Dellar, 1997). Results showed that there were statistically significant differences in the sub-scales of Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Effectiveness, and Joint Planning with regard to gender and type of school. In addition, Transformational Leadership is significantly related to Transactional Leadership and Leadership Outcomes, and Transformational Leadership is related to the subscales of School Culture. The findings of this research will be discussed in the context of formulating proposals for the key role of school leadership in the school environment of the future.