The structural analysis of the effects of distributed leadership on teacher professionalism

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2011-12

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the direct effects of distributed leadership on teacher professionalism and the mediating effects of collective teacher efficacy, professional learning community, and teacher job satisfaction by using teacher data from the Korea Educational Longitudinal Study (KELS) of 2007, conducted by the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI). After scrutinizing theoretical foundations and reported evidence on the relationships between research factors, the research constructed a structural equation model. The research questions that guided this analysis are as follows: 1) Does the model of this research fit the observed data?; 2) Does distributed leadership practice directly influence teacher professionalism?; and 3) Does distributed leadership practice indirectly influence teacher professionalism mediated by collective teacher efficacy, professional learning community, and teacher job satisfaction? As a result, the initial hypothesized research model shows an inadequate fit to the data. The researcher revised the initial research model by using the results of modification indices provided by the output result of the AMOS program. The results of the study revealed that 1) the research model successfully accounted for the KELS data, 2) distributed leadership negatively influenced teacher professionalism, and 3) distributed leadership indirectly and significantly influenced teacher professionalism, mediated by collective teacher efficacy, professional learning community, and teacher job satisfaction. Additionally, the effects of these mediators also indicated significant relationships between study variables. Public schools cannot achieve their goals and sustain fundamental reform without considering the day-to-day lives of educators, leadership practice, and educators’ workload, and sometimes even re-culturing of schools. School organization should be a place where school members all collaborate with each other to achieve organizational goals and where teachers and students are learning through reciprocal cooperation. When we consider that teacher professionalism can be directly associated with student and parent satisfaction and student achievement, this study contributes to the creation of a model that improves teacher professionalism, and by implication student achievement and satisfaction.

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