Instructional Leadership and Students Academic Performance: Mediating Effects of Teacher’s Organizational Commitment

Abstract

This study investigates the mediating effects of teacher organizational commitment on the relationship between principal's instructional leadership and students' academic performance. Principals' effective leadership performance is assumed to be responsible for students' academic performance. However, many findings from the literature indicate no significant direct effect between instructional leadership and students' academic performance. Therefore, the current study hypothesized that principals' instructional leadership indirectly enhances students' academic performances through teacher organizational commitment. Data obtained from 440 primary school teachers from the state of Azad Jammu & Kashmir of Pakistan and pre-existing school academic performance data obtained from each school participated. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling, employing AMOS. The study's findings indicate that there is an indirect positive effect of principals' instructional leadership and students' academic performance through teacher's organizational commitment. Hence, schools with higher instructional leadership levels had better teachers, commitment to school, teaching work, teaching occupation, workgroup, and higher student's academic performances. Therefore, increasing the instructional leadership practices in schools through teacher organizational commitment contributes to Pakistan's overall student academic performances. Therefore, it is recommended to use instructional leadership components in the curriculum that effectively train new principals.

Influence of Principal Instructional Leadership Behaviour on the Organisational Commitment of Junior High School Teachers in Surakarta

“…When the level of teacher commitment to the school increases it will cause teachers to work harder and the results translate into improvement in student academic performance. Therefore, schools with higher levels of instructional leadership have better teacher commitment to the school, and higher student academic performance (Khan et al, 2020).…”

A Closer Look on Lecturer’s Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction: A Survey on Selected University

“…It is based on industrial organizational psychology which describes an individual's psychological closeness to the organization. Another definition is expressed by Khan et al (2020) which states that organizational commitment is the perceptions of organizational members related to their psychological expression of their proximity to the organization. Another definition is also expressed by Aladwan et al (2021) that organizational commitment is a process that focuses on developing and improving various strategies, structures, and operations within an organization to increase its capacity to change and become more effective.…”

“…Theories of instructional leadership were initially developed in the United States during the effective school movement in the 1980s. This movement resulted in studies, one of the main ideas of which was to emphasize the important role of school principals in creating a children's learning environment in elementary schools (Khan et al 2020).…”

“…Another definition is expressed by Akram et al (2017) which states that instructional leadership refers to a direction, resources, and support by the leadership to teachers and students to improve the quality of learning and teaching (Akram et al 2017). Khan et al (2020) define instructional leadership as directing and influencing teachers to improve and practice the school or college curriculum and help improve and achieve goals. Referring to these definitions, as an illustration, an instructional leader uses this leadership model in communicating with their staff and jointly setting specific goals related to the achievements of their students.…”

The Influence of Architecture Students’ Learning Approaches on their Academic Performance in Two Nigeria Universities

“…The findings from previous studies have also shown that students' learning approaches could be affected by the school type. Khan et al (2020) investigated how peculiarities in school leadership and teaching could affect students' learning experiences, which will inadvertently affect their learning approaches. Concomitantly, Leung, Fang and Lu (2015) compared the learning approaches of universities in mainland China and Hong Kong City and found learning approaches to differ significantly in terms of university type.…”