Teachers and Principals: Gender-Related Perceptions of Leadership and Power in Secondary Schools

Abstract

This study explores teachers’ perceptions of their own power at the personal, interpersonal, and organizational levels of their schools. It investigates how the interaction between principal and teacher gender affects high school teachers’ evaluations of the principal’s leadership, as well as how it influences subsequent evaluations of their own power. The study employs a sample of almost 9,000 teachers in over 300 public, Catholic, and private secondary schools from the Administrator and Teachers Survey of the High School and Beyond study. A strong pattern of results shows that while female teachers feel empowered when working in schools headed by female principals, male teachers consider themselves less powerful in those circumstances. The interaction between teachers’ and principals’ gender contributes to understanding the persistent underrepresentation of women in the high school principalship.