Perceived leadership style and job satisfaction of teachers in Public and Private Schools

Abstract

During a prolonged period of financial crisis in Greece, public administration has exhibited signs of deteriorating work conditions, erratic funding and low staff morale, creating unfavourable working conditions. The present work investigated the perceived leadership style and job satisfaction of teachers in public and private schools in the capital city of the region of Epirus in NW Greece. Job satisfaction was measured with the use of Warr-Cook-Wall job satisfaction scale. The MLQ 5X-Short was used to assess teachers' perception of leadership style. Compared to public schools, private school teachers exhibited higher level of job satisfaction. In both public and private schools, a transformational model of leadership prevailed followed by a transactional model of leadership with a significant higher score of transformational leadership prevailing in private schools. The results indicate that compared to public schools, the higher level of job satisfaction of private school teachers stems at least partially from differences in environmental factors such as work conditions and motivation by the school principal.