From Principals to Teachers to Students: Exploring an Integrative Model for Predicting Students’ Achievements

Abstract

Purpose: This study explored a theoretical model proposing direct and mediated effects for principals’ characteristics—principals’ information-processing mechanisms (PIPMs) and instructional leadership (IL)—with organizational learning mechanisms (OLMs), for schools’ OLMs with teachers’ characteristics—teachers’ affective commitment (TAC), collective teacher efficacy (CTE), and teachers’ job satisfaction (TJS)—and finally, for teachers’ characteristics with students’ achievements on national math and science tests. Design: Data were collected from a multisource survey of a random sample of 130 elementary school principals representing Israel’s full socioeconomic range, 1,700 teachers from those schools, as well as data on those schools retrieved from the Ministry of Education data set. Data were aggregated at the school level for structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. Findings: Analysis from SEM confirmed that IL emerges as a prominent mediator between PIPMs and OLMs. OLMs emerged as a prominent mediator between IL and the three teachers’ characteristics. TAC and CTE were significantly directly related to students’ math and science achievements. Finally, OLMs promoted students’ math and science achievements only through CTE. Implications: The relationships found for both principal characteristics (PIPMs and IL) with OLMs in schools highlight principals’ potentially important role in promoting collective learning within schools through utilization of OLMs, which can predict critical teacher characteristics (TAC, CTE, TJS), which in turn can predict school effectiveness measures (i.e., students’ achievements).

Learning from intelligent failure: an organizational resource for school improvement

“…According to Schechter (2008), OLM in schools involves four dimensions: (1) Analyzing information: the meaning given to incoming information through collective sense-making and decision-making to incorporate the relevant information into school organizational routines; (2) Storing-retrieving-putting to use of information: the processes for information storage and coding into school memory; (3) Receiving-disseminating information: the process used to share information among school staff, which involves distributing the information to school stakeholders through discussion and (4) Seeking information: Scouting for information and learning from the policies and skills of other organizations and colleagues. OLM constitutes a critical component impacting school effectiveness in dealing with the dynamic wealth of information at its disposal and increasing teacher motivation and self-efficacy (Qadach et al, 2020). Therefore, through learning mechanisms, principals and school faculty can be well-informed regarding which of the several learning dimensions need to be underscored to enhance school learning from intelligent failure.…”

“…For instance, the school's socioeconomic context remains a key factor to principals' ability to improve their schools' effectiveness. This is especially true for schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas functioning in an environment that is characterized by growing complexities and a climate of outcome-based accountability (Huang et al, 2020;Qadach et al, 2020). The increased use of standards has begun to regulate educational policy decision-making by establishing a commensurate space for measurement of educational performance (Benoliel and Berkovich, 2018).…”

Cultural values, school innovative climate and organizational affective commitment: a study of Israeli teachers

“…There is a great deal of literature examining the notion of organizational commitment, specifically in the educational system (Collie et al , 2011; Qadach et al , 2020), due to its relationship with important work-related concepts (Shapira-Lishchinsky and Rosenblatt, 2009). Organizational commitment is defined as “the relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization” (Mowday et al , 1979, p. 226).…”

“…Teachers' affective commitment is considered an important determinant of dedication and loyalty, a sense of belonging, increased involvement, a willingness to pursue organizational goals (Rhoades et al , 2001) and a desire to remain at the school (Cohen, 2000); it is also positively related to student achievement (Qadach et al , 2020) and innovations (Arnold et al , 2010) and strongly linked to organizational outcomes (Trammell, 2016).…”

“…Research has focused on factors that affect teachers' affective commitment. Of these, some are related to organizational factors, such as leadership styles (Demirtas and Akdogan, 2015; Kim et al , 2018) and to situational factors (Orgambídez and Almeida, 2018), such as organizational support (Rhoades et al , 2001) or organizational learning mechanisms (Qadach et al , 2020; Eno-Attarchi, 2011). Other studies have focused on personal characteristics, such as demographics, gender (Dalgic, 2014), educational level (Bargal and Barak, 2013) or experience (Rana and Agrawal, 2016) or on the relationship between traits such as agreeableness and conscientiousness and affective commitment (Çelik and Oral, 2016).…”