Value Orientation and Leadership Style among School Principals in Israel’s Arab Education System

Abstract

The objective of the current study is to contribute to existing knowledge about the Arab education system in Israel. The study focuses on the school principals. They constitute the leadership of the Arab education system in the 21st century to cope successfully with the many challenges. The Arab education system functions within a society still marked by clear signs of traditionalism and being in a state of transition to a more modern society. The system is undergoing many changes, ranging from the academization of school principals to accelerated feminization of the teaching profession. The study examines relationship between the principals' value orientation (pragmatic orientation versus moral orientation) and their leadership style (transactional leadership vs. transformational leadership) among school principals in Israel’s Arab education system. The leadership styles of the principals were examined by a questionnaire along a continuum ranging from transactional leadership to transformational leadership. Data were collected from 100 school principals, constituting a randomly selected sample among 399 elementary school principals and 267 secondary school principals from the Arab education system in Israel (total of 666 principals). Sixty elementary school principals and 40 secondary school principals were randomly selected. The research results indicated that principals having a pragmatic value orientation tended to a transactional leadership style. In contrast, principals having a moral value orientation tended to a transformational leadership style.