Principal trust in teachers and leadership for learning: unravelling the mediating roles of well-being and resilience

ABSTRACTProfessional learning communities are essential for school success, and principal leadership is crucial for teachers' participation in them. Based on social exchange theory and ambidextrous leadership theory, this study explored the mediating role of teachers' trust in principals between moral leadership and professional learning communities and the moderating role of principals' controlling behavior in this relationship. A total of 577 elementary school teachers in China participated in this study. The study found that moral leadership was positively related to professional learning communities, and this relationship was mediated by teachers' trust in principals. Additionally, principals' controlling behavior positively moderated the relationship between moral leadership and trust in principals, and negatively moderated the relationship between moral leadership and professional learning communities. These results contribute to the delivery of guidance for principals to enhance teacher trust and develop professional learning communities.

In this study, the effect of school principals’ administrative mentality on teachers’ participation in the decision-making process was analysed via the intermediary role of teachers’ trust in principals. In this study, which utilised structural equation modelling (SEM) to analyse conceptual relationships, the sample consisted of 646 teachers who worked in various school types in the Cekmekoy district of Istanbul. In the findings, a positive correlation was found between benevolent and moral leadership (dimensions of paternalistic leadership behaviour), and trust in principals and teachers’ participation in decision making. On the other hand, a negative and significant relationship was found between the authoritarian leadership dimension and trust in principals and teachers’ participation. The results of the SEM analysis, in which the conceptual model was tested, indicated that the benevolent and moral leadership dimensions of paternalistic leadership could positively predict trust in the administrator and teachers’ participation in decision making. As for authoritarian leadership, it negatively predicted teachers’ participation in decision making, and trust in principals played a full intermediary role in this relationship. When these findings were synthesised, morality and benevolence were found to affect teachers’ trust in principals and participation positively, while authoritarian leadership was found to have a negative effect.

The purpose of this work was to understand the concept of trust, its meaning, antecedents, and outcomes as they apply to teacher trust in principals. Data for this study were collected using a modification of a survey instrument from Mayer and Davis (Journal of Applied Psychology 84(1):123–136, 1999) and McAllister (Academy of Management Journal 38:24–59, 1995). Data from the survey were used to build a structural equation model (SEM) that models the relationships between teacher trust in the principal and the following: (1) perceived principal trustworthiness, (2) teachers’ propensity to trust, (3) principal teacher interaction patterns (4) background similarities between teachers and their principals, (5) student demographics and (6) overall school achievement. The data include responses from 377 teachers in 13 elementary schools in one Southern California school district. The tested trust model confirms the existence of a second-order factor for Trustworthiness that integrates three first-order factors for principal ability, benevolence, and integrity. This second-order factor is a strong predictor of teacher trust for their principals. Teachers’ propensity to trust other adults strongly influences their actual level of trust for their principals. There is a strong relationship between teachers viewing principals as trustworthy and the frequency of principal/teacher interactions. Significant relationships were not found, however, between teacher/principal trust and their background similarities, student demographics, or overall student achievement.

Research has revealed that appropriate school leadership practices can positively support and promote teacher learning. This study examines the influences of Learning-Centered Leadership upon Teacher Agency, Trust and professional learning in a Kuwaiti context. Following results from recent empirical research, this study tested a model of principal leadership effects upon teacher learning via the mediators of Teacher Trust and Agency. The researchers collected data from 1060 teachers working at 64 Kuwaiti public schools and analyzed this data using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Results validated this model, showing that Learning-Centered Leadership affects teacher professional development via Teacher Trust and Agency. This improves our understanding of the relationship between school leadership and teacher professional learning both in Kuwait and internationally; relevant recommendations are listed.

The present study sought to contribute to the growing international knowledge base regarding the influence of school leadership on teacher learning by examining the relationship between principals’ instructional and transformational leadership types and teachers’ professional learning perceptions with the mediating effects of teachers’ perceptions of collective efficacy and trust. A cross-sectional survey design of the quantitative research method was employed using the data collected from a total number of 1,200 teachers in Turkey. Mediation analysis in structural equation modelling (SEM) with the bootstrapping method was used to analyse the structural relations among variables. The result showed that both principals’ instructional and transformational leadership types were significantly related to teacher professional learning, mediating by teacher trust and collective teacher efficacy. The study reconfirmed the results of the growing body of global literature on the relationship between principal leadership and teacher professional learning and practice.

Abstract: Integrating values in managing a school is crucial to balance the role of school leaders as leaders and managers under one roof. This study highlights the practice of ethical leadership (branch of value-based leadership) based on seven dimensions. Using a mixed method (QUAN-qual) approach, this study i) identifies the level of principal’s ethical leadership practices and trust in leader as perceived by primary and secondary school teachers of Malaysia, ii) explores the relationship between both variables and classifies accordingly the subconstructs of ethical leadership practices that significantly contribute to developing trust in their leaders, iii) ascertain the understanding and practices of ethical leadership style among the principals as perceived by the principals themselves. The quantitative data were collected via Ethical Leadership at Workplace (ELW) and Trust in Leader (TL) questionnaire. A total of 438 public school teachers nationwide responded to the questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical method. The findings show that principals throughout the country practiced high ethical leadership. The level of teacher's trust in principals was also high. The inference analysis found very strong significant relationship between ethical leadership and teachers' trust on their principals. A semi-structured interview with three school principals was conducted to collect the qualitative data revealed that the Malaysian principals lacked the understanding of ethical leadership style, nevertheless practiced several dimensions of ethical leadership in their school administration. The study suggests ethical leadership to be integrated into current school leadership practices to further understand its impact.
 Keywords: Ethical leadership, School Leadership, Trust in Leader, Value-based Leadership

Objectives The purpose of this study is to introduce the concept of coaching leadership into school sports to ex-amine how physical education teachers' coaching leadership affects teacher trust and class attitude, and to verify whether teacher trust mediates the relationship between coaching leadership and class flow.
 Methods To this end, 372 copies of data were collected from 400 middle school students attending 8 middle schools in S City, and 351 copies, excluding 21 copies, including questionnaires that responded faithfully, were used for analysis. Technical analysis was conducted using the SPSS 28.0 program, and confirmatory factor analy-sis and structural equation model were applied using the AMOS 29.0 program.
 Results First, it was found that the coaching leadership of physical education teachers had a positive effect on teacher trust. Second, teacher trust was found to have a positive effect on class flow. Third, coaching leadership was found to have a positive effect on class flow. Fourth, teacher trust was found to have a mediating effect in the relationship between physical education teachers' coaching leadership and class flow.
 Conclusions The results of the study confirmed that physical education teachers' coaching leadership, students' trust in teachers, and class flow have a positive effect on each other, which means that coaching leadership can also be applied in school sports and can help students improve teacher trust and class flow. In addition, it can be presented as a reference for the right leadership and guidance methods to physical education teachers who guide students.

The responsibilities of teachers and principals in Government Funded Religious Schools (GFRS) in Malaysia have become more demanding as the enrolment rates have risen over time. The principals’ transformational leadership (TL) potentially affects teachers’ trust (TT), which directly influences their work commitment (WC) in school. However, limited evidence is available to support this assertion. Thus, this study seeks to investigate: (a) the level of TL, TT, and WC and (b) the influence of TT as a mediator between TL and WC from the teachers’ perspective in the Government Funded Religious Schools (GFRS) in Selangor. This study employed a survey research design. A survey questionnaire was administered to 297 GFRS teachers in Selangor. These teachers were selected using a stratified random sampling technique. Descriptive (means, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage) and inferential statistics (analysis of regression and predictive accuracy) were employed to analyse the data. The findings suggested that the overall level TL (M = 4.077, SD = 0.533), TT (M = 4.070, SD = 0.521) and WC (M = 4.188, SD = 0.413) in GFRS in Selangor were ‘high’. It was also found that TL was a significant predictor of TT (B = 0.867, SE = 0.026, p < 0.05) and WC (B = 0.361, SE = 0.083, p < 0.05), with approximately 29% of the variance in WC accounted for by TL (R2 = 0.290). However, TT was not a significant predictor of WC (B = 0.064, SE = 0.085, p > 0.05), suggesting that TT did not mediate the relationship between TL and WC. Even though this study exemplified that the level of TL, TT and WC was at a high level, TT was found to have an insignificant effect on WC. This provides a new insight in understanding this complex relationship. The dynamic of relationships—among teachers, between teachers and staff, and with outside parties, might have an impact on developing TT and WC among these teachers.

&lt;p style="text-align:justify"&gt;Motivation for school is an important concept which influences students’ academic, social and cultural development. Leadership behaviours to be displayed by school principals can be thought to affect the network of social relations in school and to support the climate of trust in school for students to develop positive attitudes towards the school. In this context, this paper aims to analyse the correlations between school principals’ social justice leadership behaviours, students’ trust in school principals and motivation for school. The study group was composed of 762 secondary school students from Altindag district of Ankara. The data were collected with social justice leadership scale, trust in the school principal scale and motivation for the school scale. The data were put to descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The findings demonstrated that students had moderate level of perceptions of school principals’ social justice leadership behaviours and trust in school principals and high level of motivation for school. Besides, significant correlations were also found between the variables. Additionally, it was found that social justice leadership predicted significantly trust in school principals and motivation for school. The findings showed that the social justice leadership behaviors of the school principal play a key role on students’ motivation and their trust in the principals.&lt;/p&gt;

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the relationship between leadership and teacher professional learning considering two mediating variables – teacher trust and teacher agency.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilized structural equation modeling in analyzing the responses from 1,654 secondary public teachers from 43 schools in the Philippines.FindingsLeadership does not have a direct relationship with teacher professional learning. The established relationship of leadership and professional learning from literature exists through the mediation of teacher trust and teacher agency.Originality/valueThe results point out that school leaders must affect teacher trust and teacher agency to influence the engagement of teachers to professional learning. Contrary to what has been accepted in educational management that leaders can directly impact teachers, the findings of this study dictate that the full effects of leadership are coursed through mediating pathways.

The purpose of this study is to discover and describe the perceptions of teachers about their level of trust in principals and shared leadership skills in schools. The study group was 1,174 teachers from randomly selected schools in Istanbul, Kocaeli and Sakarya. The research was conducted on relational survey method. Data analyzed in a packet program for social sciences. The research indicated that trust in principal was positively and significantly related to shared leadership and its sub-dimensions. The correlation analysis predicted that there was a medium level of positive correlation between trust in principal and shared leadership perceptions of the teachers. Moreover, emotional support and joint completion of task dimension of shared leadership are predictors of trust in principals in Turkish schools therefore, the researcher can claim that trust in principals is the core of organizational trust level and increasing shared leadership behavior as well.

PurposeDeveloping countries in many parts of the world have experienced a disturbing trend in the differential pace of economic development among urban and rural communities. These inequities have been observed in education systems in Asia, Africa, and Latin America where researchers have documented differences not only in resource allocation but also in the academic performance among students in urban and rural schools. Recently researchers have shifted their focus from examining financial and physical resources to investigating the nature and impact of differences in human resources. The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in school organization processes associated with learning-centered leadership and teacher learning among urban and rural primary schools in Thailand. Teacher trust and teacher agency were proposed as possible mediators of leadership effects on teacher learning.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a cross-sectional survey design. The authors collected survey data from 1,011 teachers and 60 principals in 30 urban and 30 rural primary schools in Thailand. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping were used to analyze the proposed model of leadership and teacher professional learning. More specifically, data analysis was aimed at determining the nature of relationships among the constructs in the conceptual model and whether patterns of leadership and teacher learning differed in urban and rural primary schools.FindingsThe results affirmed a model whereby school leadership exerted significant indirect effects on teacher learning in both urban and rural primary schools. Data analyses determined that the path of leadership effects moved through trust to agency and then to teacher professional learning. Thus, while the authors found a strong direct effect of leadership on teacher trust, there were only small direct effects of leadership on teacher agency and no meaningful direct effects of leadership on teacher professional learning. Thus, the research affirmed a full mediation model of leadership effects on teacher learning. Finally, the study also affirmed that the measured variables were perceived as significantly stronger in the urban schools than in the rural schools.Social implicationsThe research expands on prior research on the “achievement gap” in Thailand by demonstrating the existence of a similar “human resource gap” when comparing urban and rural school leaders and teachers. This study implies that addressing the gap in student achievement will require action aimed at building the capacity of the principals and teachers who work with the rural pupils.Originality/valueThese results suggest differences in the quality of human resources between urban and rural primary schools in Thailand. There may be potential benefit to be gained from providing training focused on “learning-centered leadership” for principals and middle level leaders, as well as expanding access to quality professional development opportunities for rural teachers.

We explored the mediating effect of Collective Efficacy (CE) on the relationship between Trust and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) in an education setting. A total of 255 teachers (females = 56%, elementary in an urban area = 47%, mean years of service = 9.77, SD = 8.23) completed surveys on Trust, CE, and OCB. Results from partial least square structural equation modelling indicated that Trust in colleagues, Trust in students and CE were related to OCB, while Trust in principals and parents was not. Trust in principals and colleagues was positively related to CE, but not Trust in parents and students. Most importantly, CE only mediates the relationship between teacher Trust and OCB and the relationship between Trust in colleagues and OCB. These findings are consistent with social exchange theory by which work behaviours may be contingent on perceived worth to self and the organisation. The results imply that school management and policymakers should implement strategies to recognise teachers’ accomplishments and promote a supportive environment through peer mentoring programmes.

Objective: This study aimed to examine the mediating role of trust in teachers in the relationship between school climate and school belonging among South African high school students. Methods and Materials: A descriptive correlational research design was employed using a sample of 461 high school students from South Africa, selected based on the Morgan and Krejcie sample size table. Data were collected through three standardized questionnaires: the Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) Scale to measure school belonging, the Delaware School Climate Survey–Student (DSCS-S) for school climate, and the Trust in Schools Scale to assess trust in teachers. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficients, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used for data analysis. The statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS-27 for initial correlations and AMOS-21 for model testing and mediation analysis. Findings: Descriptive statistics indicated moderately high levels of school climate (M = 3.62, SD = 0.47), trust in teachers (M = 3.81, SD = 0.52), and school belonging (M = 3.74, SD = 0.49). Pearson correlation results showed that school climate was significantly correlated with trust in teachers (r = .59, p &lt; .001) and school belonging (r = .52, p &lt; .001), while trust in teachers was strongly correlated with school belonging (r = .66, p &lt; .001). SEM results confirmed a good model fit (χ² = 124.37, df = 71, RMSEA = 0.041, CFI = 0.97), with trust in teachers significantly mediating the relationship between school climate and school belonging. The indirect effect of school climate on school belonging through trust in teachers was significant (β = .32, p &lt; .001), supporting the proposed mediation model. Conclusion: The findings highlight the critical role of trust in teachers in fostering students’ sense of belonging in school, emphasizing the importance of nurturing a positive school climate to strengthen relational trust and emotional connectedness among students.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate whether principals can have an impact on organizational learning (OL). The authors use a cultural perspective, based both in the emerging literature from positive psychology and the relatively well-developed research tradition in studying the nature and impacts of OL to address four questions: first, is principal’s cognitive trust in teachers’ professional capacities related to knowledge sharing/OL among teachers?; second, is principal’s trust in teachers’ professional capacities related to teachers’ reports of being in a caring school setting (relational trust)?; third, is principal caring related to knowledge sharing/OL among teachers?; and fourth, is principal trust particularly important in school contexts with low income students?Design/methodology/approachAn existing database that includes principal and teacher surveys in 116 schools in the USA provides the basis for examining the four questions. Optimized scaling techniques were used to develop measures of principal trust in teachers professional capacities, teachers’ perception of principal caring, an indicator of academic support for students that includes a social justice of equity emphasis, and capacity for OL. The demographic characteristics of the student body and school size were used as possible moderating variables. The data were subject to both regression and path analysis.FindingsPrincipal trust was directly related to teachers’ perceptions of principal caring, and indirectly related to OL. The measure of academic support for students had the strongest direct effect on OL. While the percentage of non-white students and school size had some relationship to OL, they do not change the overall results. The model, which supports the role that principals play in fostering both equity and OL is sustained when the authors examine student achievement.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations of the study stem largely from the nature of the sample and measures, which are confined to 116 schools in the USA, and a secondary analysis of a cross-sectional survey database. Because understanding the dynamics of a relationship-based/positive leadership perspective require detailed qualitative studies and longitudinal data, the results are presented as suggestive of issues that should be studied further.Originality/valueBoth trust and OL have been extensively studied both in education and other settings. However, few studies have simultaneously examined leadership, different types of trust and OL and none have done so in the context of positive psychology. The contribution of this analysis is thus empirical (extending the boundaries of what is known using concepts that are familiar) and theoretical (beginning the development of a theory of positive leadership that incorporates multiple factors associated with healthy and productive school environments).