Transformational leadership, leader–member exchange and school learning climate: Impact on teachers’ innovative behaviour in the Netherlands

Abstract

Despite the fact that innovative behaviour of teachers is important for the quality of teaching in our knowledge society, there is still little research into leadership and organizational factors that influence teachers’ innovative behaviour. By combining self-concept leadership theory, social exchange theory and a hierarchical model of the distance of variables to human behaviour from an interactive perspective, we tried to unravel the relationships between school organization and teacher variables. Based on longitudinal data (2011, 2012, 2013) from a select sample of 597 teachers (being part of a research panel), a structural equation model (Mplus) was used for testing the relationship between transformational leadership, the school learning climate, the quality of teacher–leadership relationships (leader–member exchange), teachers’ inquiry habit of mind and teachers’ innovative behaviour. The findings show a very good fit for the model and contribute to confirmation of the combined used theories and concepts of leadership in education, leaderships’ influence on the organizational learning climate, the crucial mediating role of leader–member exchange between organizational variables and teacher variables, and the mediating dispositional variable of teachers’ inquiry habit of mind between leader–member exchange and innovative behaviour. This study adds to our insights into the complexity of innovation in school organizations.