Effects of Transformational Leadership Behaviors on Teachers’ Perceived Leader Effectiveness and Their Job Satisfaction

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Teachers and teaching

Proposal

Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the relationships between transformational leadership behaviors, teachers’ perceived leader effectiveness and their job satisfaction in China after controlling for teacher self-efficacy. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique was employed and the results showed that teachers’ perceived transformational leadership behaviors accounted for 18.4% of the variance in Chinese teachers’ job satisfaction and 10.3% in leader effectiveness, respectively. In addition, the Power and Influence Action dimension of the transformational leadership showed unique Chinese characteristics and the Motivation and Consideration dimension also demonstrated some differential connotations with the corresponding dimensions of Western countries. The authors finally concluded that engaging teachers in school decision-making was a challenge in Chinese schools.
1. Method

1.1 Participants
This paper is part of a larger research project which was conducted in a city of Heilongjiang Province, a province located in the northeast of China. The city is in the west of Heilongjiang Province, consisting of five districts and four counties, with a population of approximately 2.7 million. Generally speaking, the economic development of Heilongjiang province is little bit lower than China’s average level (e.g., GDP average). However, the city is one of the top five cities in Heilongjiang province due to its gas and petroleum products. This information indicates that the samples selected in this study can represent a general urban Chinese education system. In the school district that we studied, there are 25 high schools, including 17 urban and 8 county schools. Purposive sampling was used to select four high schools, covering urban and county schools, as well as key and ordinary schools (Key schools refer to those schools that are selective in their admission criteria and have government-supported advantages in financing, facilities, and teacher qualifications. In addition, key schools have been allowed to recruit academically excellent students).
The larger project involved administration of 480 questionnaire copies in December 2016 to all the teachers from the four high schools who actually teach in classrooms and 425 returned the completed questionnaires, with a response rate of 89%. The full questionnaire consisted of four parts: Part One included participants’ demographic information, their overall job satisfaction and their perceived leadership effectiveness. Part Two included 45 items of the Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X) Short Rater Form (Bass & Avolio, 1995). Part three included 24 items of the long form of the Ohio Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001). Part Four included 13 items of teacher perceptions of use of test scores in their evaluation. While the results of Part Four were reported somewhere else, the current paper used the data mainly from Part Two, Part Three, and part of the information from Part One.
The final sample consisted of 30.l% male teachers and 69.9% female teachers. The subjects they taught were Math (n=62), Chinese (n=55), English (n=58), Physics (n=53), Chemistry (n=49), and others (n=148). The grades they taught were from ten to twelve (36.5% Grade Ten, 35.3% Grade Eleven, 28.2% Grade Twelve). In terms of teaching experience, 6.6% teachers (n=28) had less than 5 years, 12% teachers (n=51) had 5 to 9 years 54.6% teachers (n=232) had 10-19 years, and 26.8% (n=114) had more than 20. As for school characteristics, 65.2% worked in key schools while 34.8% were from ordinary schools; 49.2% were from city schools and 50.8% from county schools.

1.2 Instruments

1.21 Measure of transformational leadership
The Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X) Short Rater Form (Bass & Avolio, 1995) was employed in this study to measure Chinese teachers’ perceived transformational leadership behaviors of their principals, with the permission from Mind Garden, Inc. The MLQ-5X contains nine factors that examine areas of leadership. There are five factors that represent transformational leadership, three factors that represent transactional factors, and one laissez-faire factor. The reliabilities for the total items and for each leadership factor scale range from .74 to .94 (Avolio & Bass, 2004).
In the original questionnaire, transformational leadership behaviors were measured via five factors, including Idealized Influence Attributes (ILA), Idealized Influence Behaviors (IIB), Inspirational Motivation (IM), Intellectual Stimulation (IS), and Individual Consideration (IC). Each factor has 4 items. Participants were asked to rate the transformational leadership items on a 5-point Likert scale, indicating the frequency of behaviors observed (0 = Not at all, 1 = Once in a while, 2 = Sometimes, 3 = Fairly often, 4 = Frequently, if not always).
The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted using Mplus Version 7 to examine the factor structure with Chinese data and the results were as follows: SB-χ2 (df) = 486.3(160), CFI = .887, TLI = .866, RMSEA (90%-CI) = .069 (.062, .076), SRMR = .054, AIC = 20063, BIC = 20346. According to typical interpretation guidelines (Browne & Cudeck, 1993; Hu & Bentler, 1998; Marsh, Hau, & Grayson, 2005; Marsh, Hau, & Wen, 2004), values greater than .90 for the CFI and TLI are considered to be acceptable fit to the data. Thus the original structure was unacceptable in China so that an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to explore the structure of the scale. The EFA revealed three factors (see the Results section for details).

1.22 Measures of leadership effectiveness, teacher job satisfaction and self-efficacy
Teacher perceived leader effectiveness was measured by using the following six items: To what extent do you believe that the principal has an effect on the learning outcomes of the pupils? To what extent do you believe that the principal has an effect on the behaviors of the pupils? To what extent do you believe that the principal has an effect on the effectiveness of teachers in teaching and learning? To what extent do you believe that the principal has an effect on the job satisfaction of teachers? To what extent do you believe that the principal has an effect on the effectiveness of the school in relation to achieving its aims? To what extent do you believe that the principal has an effect on the quality of the school? These items were on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “1=strongly disagree” to “5=strongly agree”. The Cronbach’s alpha value for the scale was .84.
Teacher job satisfaction was measured by using the following three items: I look forward to going to school every day; I would still have chosen the same job had I known about the problems a teacher might meet; and I enjoy working as a teacher. These items were on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “1=strongly disagree” to “5=strongly agree”. Cronbach’s α internal consistency reliability of the scale was .63. The long form of the Ohio Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001) was used in this study. The scale contained 24 items and they were on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “1=nothing” to “5=great deal”. The Cronbach’s alpha value for the scale was .96.

2. Data analysis
First, EFA was conducted to examine the factor structure of the measure of transformational school leadership with Chinese data. Robust maximum likelihood estimation with standard errors and tests of fit that were robust against non-normality of item responses and the use of categorical variables in the presence of at least four response categories was used (Rhemtulla, Brosseau-Liard, & Savalei, 2012). According to typical interpretation guidelines (Browne & Cudeck, 1993; Hu & Bentler, 1998; Marsh, Hau, & Grayson, 2005; Marsh, Hau, & Wen, 2004), as stated earlier, values greater than .90 and .95 for the CFI and TLI are considered to be respectively indicative of acceptable and excellent fit to the data, while values smaller than .08 or .06 for the RMSEA support respectively acceptable and excellent model fit.
Second, structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to investigate the mediating role of self-efficacy in the associations between leadership and job satisfaction as well as between leadership and effectiveness. All analyses were tested through SPSS 22.0 and Mplus Version 7 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2012).

3. Conclusions

The purpose of this study was to explore the structure of the transformational leadership scale with the Chinese data and to examine the relationships between transformational school leadership, teachers’ perceived leader effectiveness and their job satisfaction. Firstly, this study revealed a three-factor structure: Motivation and Consideration, Power and Influence Action, and Stimulation. Among them, the dimension of Power and Influence Action is unique. Different from western countries, Chinese leaders exhibit characteristics of both power and moral due to Chinese culture.
Secondly, this study provides evidence that teachers’ perceived transformational leadership behaviors accounted for a part (18.4%) of the variance in Chinese teachers’ job satisfaction and 10.3% in leader effectiveness. Specifically, among the three dimensions of transformational leadership (i.e., Motivation and Consideration, Power and Influence Action, and Stimulation), Stimulation has significantly positive effects on job satisfaction. In addition, Motivation and Consideration show significantly positive effects on leadership effectiveness.
Lastly, this study provides additional evidence that teacher self-efficacy significantly contributes to teacher job satisfaction. This study shows that of the measures tested only teachers’ self-efficacy on student engagement was a significant predictor of teacher job satisfaction.

Authors

• Xinxin Ma, 18769718497

• Shujie Liu, 15563743386

• Lingqi Meng, 13173182557