Study of the impact of leadership in educational context of Portuguese Teachers

Abstract

The present study focuses on the study of school director’s leadership, its impact in motivation at work and teachers’ commitment within Portuguese public education schools. Three main research goals were defined: (i) to identify the type of leadership (transformational, ethical and moral) most prevalent in those institutions, the necessary skills in the leadership profile, as well as the strategies and practices of motivation promotion developed and implemented there; (ii) to analyze the relationships between ethical leadership, motivation at work and the organizational commitment of teachers; (iii) to adapt and validate measurement instruments, capable of operationalizing and measuring the constructs of transformational, ethical and moral leadership, motivation at work and organizational commitment in the context of Portuguese education system. It was found that school director’s leaderships oscillate predominantly between the transactional and transformational types. It was also verified that the motivational practices, developed by school leaders for teachers, more often promote extrinsic motivation, more specifically introjected and identified regulation, than intrinsic motivation. As to the analysis of the relationship between ethical leadership, organizational commitment and motivation at work, it was verified that ethical leadership has a positive correlation with intrinsic motivation and commitment. In addition, it was found that commitment has a mediating effect between ethical leadership and intrinsic motivation. Finally, we consider the application and relevance of this study to the redefinition and evaluation of the director’s leadership practices and in the improvement of the decision-making processes in the Portuguese educational context.