Learning leadership matters

Abstract

School leadership has been shown to exert a positive but mostly indirect influence on school and student outcomes. Currently, there is great interest in how quality leadership preparation is related to leadership practice and improved teacher outcomes. The purpose of the study was to understand the moderating influence of leadership preparation on leadership practices and teachers’ job collaboration, leadership and satisfaction. The study features a non-experimental design that combined data from a US study of exemplary leadership preparation and a nationally representative sample of elementary school principals. The sample consists of 175 teachers whose principals were prepared in an exemplary leadership program and 589 teachers whose principals were traditionally prepared. Data were analyzed with structural equation techniques and results have shown that innovative leadership preparation exerts a statistically significant direct effect on principalship leadership practices and a significant indirect effect on teacher collaboration and satisfaction. The results provide important policy implications. Investments in leadership preparation influences leadership practices that yield more positive teacher work conditions, which are essential for improve student learning and as a result leadership preparation program design and improvement can play an important role in district reform and school improvement.