Investigating the Major Effect of Principal’s Change Leadership on School Teachers’ Professional Development

• Main Authors: Dian-Fu Chang, Sheng-Nan Chen, Wen-Ching Chou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: The International Academic Forum 2017-12-01
• Series: IAFOR Journal of Education
• Subjects: change leadership; elementary schools; principal; professional development
• Online Access: https://iafor.org/journal/iafor-journal-of-education/volume-5-issue-3/article-7/

In a rapidly changing era, educational change has become one of the crucial tasks for better student performance in schools. Potential and innovative leadership in schools is needed to keep up with the fast-pace of change, and to achieve better learning results for students. Therefore, how to construct a teacher’s professional development to fulfil the outcome-based policy in schools is a new challenge for principals. This study focused on principals’ change leadership as perceived by school teachers and explored which dimension of change might impact on the teachers’ professional development. This study successfully invited 490 teachers from 41 elementary schools in New Taipei City (Taiwan) to participate in this study. There were 453 valid questionnaires returned which represented a 92.4% return rate. Twenty-five indicators of change in leadership were classified into three dimensions, namely: “communicating and shaping change action”, “building a supported environment”, and “adjusting organization and performance”. The teachers’ professional development has been defined by eight indicators which classified into “willing” and “effect” of participation. This study employed the stepwise method to determine the major factors that impact a teachers’ professional development by using regression models. The results reveal both “building a supported environment” and “adjusting organization and performance” in a principal’s change in leadership can explain 23.2% of the teachers’ professional development. Based on the results of regression analysis, this study suggests that properly shaping a principal’s change leadership can prompt to enhancing a teachers’ professional development. Furthermore, change leadership might be applied to wider practices to improve a teachers’ performance in various settings.