Understanding the Human Side of School Leadership: Principals’ Impact on Teachers’ Morale, Self-Efficacy, Stress, and Commitment

Abstract

This qualitative study from Ontario, Canada, reveals that principal behaviors shape teacher emotions in important ways, influencing teacher morale, burnout, stress, commitment, and self-and collective efficacy. The findings suggest that principals can influence teacher emotions through several key behaviors: professional respect shown for teacher capability; providing appropriate acknowledgement for teacher commitment, competence, and sacrifice; protecting teachers from damaging experiences like harassment; maintaining a visible presence in the school; allowing teachers' voices to be heard; and communicating a satisfying vision for their school. Implications include greater awareness at the school and system level, as well as appropriate principal training.

How Principals Use a New Accountability System to Promote Change in Teacher Practices: Evidence From Italy

“…It is assumed that principals lead through others, specifically by influencing the teachers. For instance, Lambersky (2016) showed that supporting principal behaviors have an effect on teacher morale, burnout, stress, commitment, self-efficacy and collective efficacy, confirming similar results of earlier studies (Leithwood & Beatty, 2008). Literature also suggests that principal and teacher leadership is associated with instructional practices at school (Neumerski, 2013).…”

“…Thoonen et al (2011) showed that the teachers’ sense of self-efficacy may be an important motivational factor that explains teachers’ engagement in professional learning activities and variation in teaching practices. Extant literature has shown that the principal may influence the teacher self-efficacy enhancing their confidence, commitment, motivation and ultimately student learning (Lambersky, 2016; OECD, 2014; Thoonen et al, 2011).…”

“…The research on principal leadership is largely focused on its influence on teachers, given that studies show mainly an indirect effect of principal behaviors on student outcomes (Hallinger & Heck, 1998; Lambersky, 2016; ten Bruggencate et al, 2012; Witziers, Bosker, & Krüger, 2003). It is assumed that principals lead through others, specifically by influencing the teachers.…”

Instructional leadership and teachers' intent to leave: The mediating role of collective teacher efficacy and shared vision

“…This emphasizes the significant role of CTE in schools, which was found to be a key predictor of future behavior (Geijsel et al, 2003) and an important mediator of job stressors on satisfaction and burnout (Fernet et al, 2017; Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2014). Similarly, confirming the negative correlations between shared vision and a teacher’s intent to leave highlights the important fact that when employees are included in the shared conversations regarding a school’s future agenda, their levels of commitment are heightened (Lambersky, 2014; Yahaya and Ebrahim, 2016), possibly decreasing a teacher’s intent to leave the school (Richardson et al, 2008).…”

Emotions in Learning, Teaching, and Leadership: A Bibliometric Review of Asian Literature (1990–2018)

“…There are various ways that emotional contagion occurs at a school, such as the transmission of emotions between leader-teachers, teachers-teachers, teachers-students, and students-students. Empirical evidence shows that leader's emotional competencies, positive emotional expressions, and utilization of emotions result in positive affect-based attitudes of teachers (Lambersky, 2016;Wong et al, 2010). Social relationships between teachers provide more information about the attitudes and feelings of others, and through this process, teachers transmit both positive and negative emotions and attitudes to their colleagues (Meredith et al, 2020).…”