Teachers’ perceptions of school leaders’ empowering behaviours and psychological empowerment

Abstract

Using a convenience sample of 289 teachers in Singapore, this study examined: (1) whether there were significant differences between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours; and (2) teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in relation to teachers’ psychological empowerment. Results indicated that teachers perceived their principals and immediate supervisors as exercising empowering behaviours in their daily practices, but they also perceived their principal and immediate supervisor differing in magnitude in some specific dimensions of empowering behaviours such as delegation of authority, providing individualised concern and support, articulating a vision and fostering collaborative relationships. Results also indicated that teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours were positively associated with teachers’ psychological empowerment, and that they added unique variance to each other in predicting teachers’ psychological empowerment. This study suggests the importance of considering teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours as two distinct constructs in empirical research so that their unique predictive power could be more aptly captured. From a practical standpoint, it suggests the importance for school leadership developers to enhance school leaders’ awareness and capacity in exercising empowering behaviours towards their teachers in their daily practice. Essentially, schools may stand to gain from developing empowering leaders at different levels of management to promote teachers’ psychological empowerment.

The Influence of Teachers’ Professional Development Activities on the Factors Promoting ICT Integration in Primary Schools in Mongolia

“…Fourth, teachers perceived higher autonomy to innovate after a series of teacher training activities. Previous studies emphasized the importance of collaborative leadership style in policy making, delegation of autonomy, open vision and willingness to take risks for introducing ICT into educational activities [49][50][51]. Interviews with local school leaders who facilitated the teacher training activities confirmed that school leaders themselves were aware of the advantage and thus encouraged teachers to be innovative in its use.…”

“…Teachers felt that being able to reach out to others reduces the anxieties about exposing a lack of certain skills. Lee and Nie [51] studied the teachers' perception on school leadership and found that behaviors such as delegating authority and providing individualized concern and support could empower teachers to be more active in school activities.…”

Pretesting a political skill scale in a sample of teacher-leaders from polytechnics in northeast Nigeria

“…As reform champions and change agents, teacher-leaders play a multiplicity of roles as mentors (Clarke, Killeavy, & Ferris, 2015), servant leaders (Nichols, 2011), team players (Koeslag-Kreunen, Van der Klink, Van den Bossche, & Gijselaers, 2018), team leaders (Honingh & van Genugten, 2017), curriculum reformers (Zhang & Henderson, 2018), and student character builders (Ningsih & Wijayanti, 2018). Teacher leaders perform these duties to varying degrees of involvement while relying mainly on their psychological resources (Lee & Nie, 2017;Lyness, Lurie, Ward, Mooney, & Lambert, 2013). Political skill is one psychological resource teacher-leaders seldom neglect to employ in doing what they do.…”

Παράγοντες Που Επιδρούν Στην Πρόθεση Του Εκπαιδευτικού Να Επιλέγει Σχολικά Προγράμματα Με Θέμα Τις Ανανεώσιμες Πηγές Ενέργειας

“…Το σχολικό περιβάλλον αλλά και η ευρύτερη τοπική κοινότητα επηρεάζουν τα συναισθήματα του εκπαιδευτικού, ακόμη και τις ίδιες τις πεποιθήσεις και στάσεις του (Rubie-Davies, Flint & McDonald, 2012), οι οποίες με τη σειρά τους θα καθορίσουν τις διδακτικές του επιλογές (O'Brennan, Bradshaw & Furlong, 2014). Γενικότερα το κοινωνικό περιβάλλον επιδρά στην ταυτότητα του εκπαιδευτικού (Lasky, 2005), ενώ η διαμόρφωση του ρόλου του και οι διδακτικές του επιλογές δεν πηγάζουν αποκλειστικά από το αξιακό του σύστημα, αλλά συν-διαμορφώνονται από τις αξίες που προάγονται στο εργασιακό και κοινωνικό περιβάλλον στο οποίο εντάσσεται (Lee & Nie, 2017).…”