Graduation Semester and Year

2013

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

Department

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

First Advisor

Barbara Tobolowsky

Abstract

Transformational leadership has been shown to affect organizational commitment, capacity development, and performance. However, these relationships have received very little attention in schools, especially high schools in the United States that are experiencing educational reform initiatives under No Child Left Behind. Using a sample of 1403 high school teachers from 12 Texas urban and major suburban independent school districts, this study tested the relationships between teacher perceived school-based transformational leadership, self-reported teacher agency beliefs, and self-reported school-wide teacher extra effort. The teacher agency beliefs included capability beliefs about collective teacher efficacy and context beliefs about the supportive nature of school rules and hierarchical authority. Results revealed moderate to strong positive associations between all of the major study variables. Additionally, SEM analysis revealed that transformational leadership and teacher agency beliefs explained a significant amount of teacher differences in the perceived extra effort of colleagues. SEM also revealed that teacher agency beliefs mediated most of the effects of transformational leadership behaviors on teacher extra effort. Specifically, collective teacher efficacy played a central role in the relationships, mediating all of the effects of context beliefs and a vast majority of the effects of leadership behaviors. Findings also suggest that leadership dimensions exhibit significant multicollinearity. Implications of these findings as well as recommendations for further research are discussed.

Disciplines

Education | Educational Leadership

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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