Principal leadership and organizational climate: A study of perceptions of leadership behavior on school climate in international schools.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examined the perceptions of principal leadership behaviors on school climates in international school settings. Administrator and teacher self-perceptions and overall perceptions of the behaviors which indicate levels of openness of a school climate were measured and compared.
Three indicators for principal openness behavior: supportiveness, directiveness, and restrictiveness, were examined. Three indicators for teacher openness behavior: collegiality, committedness, and disengaged behavior were examined. The aggregate of the standardized scores for behaviors were formulated into a principal openness index, a teacher openness index, and an overall school openness index.
Data were collected by obtaining responses to a survey instrument mailed electronically to 18 interested principals and their respective teaching faculties. A total of nine principals and 133 teachers from the nine schools responded for a response rate of 50%. Data for answering the research questions were analyzed using a two-dimensional factor analysis via software specifically designed to interpret the results of the survey.
The instrument used to gather the data was the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire for Secondary Schools (Hoy and Feldman, 1987), and a questionnaire designed by this researcher to gather demographic information. The results of the data collected from the international schools were compared with the results of Hoy (1997) in his study of a large sample of public schools in New Jersey. The behaviors of the principals and teachers were considered using Leithwood's (1993) <italic>Framework for Guiding Research on the Effects of Transformational School Leadership</italic>.
The researcher found that principal leadership behaviors significantly impacted the overall openness of the schools, and that the more supportive and less directive the principal behavior was perceived, the more open the school climate. In schools where the principal scored well above average on the standardized openness index, the teachers perceived the climate of the school to be <italic>open</italic>. In schools where principals scored below average on the standardized openness index, the teachers perceived the climate of the school to be <italic>closed</italic> or <italic>engaged</italic> (meaning that the teachers carried on in spite of the leader behaviors of the principal). Without an <italic>open</italic> school climate, transformational leadership on the part of either the principal or the teachers cannot develop.