Leadership Styles and Value Systems of School Principals

Abstract

The reforms conducted in the field of education are directed towards the changing manner of school management. The change is expressed in the transition from external supervision of schoolwork to the empowerment of school’s staff, with a change of the principal's and teacher's roles. It requires accountability from school’s principles and staff inproviding results of teaching and effective functioning of the school. The goal of this paper is to review research literature in order to determine the most effective leadership model in the new conditions of school management. In order to attain this goal, a consistent review of literature was performed on the following subjects: leadership evolution; transformational and transactional leadership styles; the links between a leadership style and organizational variables; the relationship between value systems and leadership styles of school’s principles. Approaches, methods, models, and means are analyzed during the examination of leadership evolution. Many studies reveal that leadership behavior is an important predictor of its effectiveness. A comparative examination of transformational and transactional leadership styles gives evidence for preference of transformational style relative to its influence on organizational variables. The literary review indicates that transformational leadership essentially improves the functioning of school and teaching processes. The effect of a value system on leadership styles of school principals is examined. As a result, it is determined that principals with a moral value system lean more towards a transformational leadership style and principals with a pragmatic value system lean more towards a transactional leadership style. Thereby, the review shows that effective leadership can be provided as a result of searching for correlations between the value systems and leadership styles.