THE IMPACT OF PRINCIPAL’S TRANSFORMATIONAL DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP STYLE ON TEACHERS’ JOB SATISFACTION AND COMMITMENT
The Impact of Principal’s Transformational Democratic Leadership Style on Teachers’ Job Satisfaction and Commitment
Abdul Ghani Kanesan Abdullah, Cheah Lee Wah & Aziah Ismail
School of Educational Studies
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Numerous researchers have noted the incompatibility between the classical authoritarian approach to leading schools and the new realities of school reform and educational improvement in this era of change. Discussions of the connection between leadership and school improvement have increasingly included the notion of democratic and transformational leadership among professional educators at the school sites. This study investigated the profile of leadership styles of Malaysian secondary school principals based on autocratic-democratic and transformational- transactional dimensions of leadership styles, to see how wide spread transformational democratic leadership practice is in Malaysian schools. In addition to that, it also investigated the correlations between principals’ leadership styles and teachers’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction, as a way to check the effectiveness or non-effectiveness of different leadership styles. A quantitative technique method was used to collect data from 1200 teachers of 120 secondary schools across the four States of Northern Peninsular Malaysia, namely, Penang, Kedah, Perlis and Northern Perak. Findings of the study revealed that school leadership practice in Malaysia is keeping apace with contemporary recommendations that school principal adopt a more democratic and transformational leadership as a way to promote higher levels of school performance and greater teachers’ job satisfaction. The results of this study also indicate that there is significant correlation between democratic transformational practices satisfaction but not with teacher’s commitment. The results also confirmed that effective leadership practices could explain significant variance in teachers’ satisfaction and commitment as well as departmental performance. These findings are discussed in the light of currently available research literatures and both practical as well as theoretical implications of the study are highlighted. Future qualitative studies are needed to provide deeper insight. Finally, it was suggested to provide opportunities for principals to practice more democratic transformational leadership behavior by empowering teachers in the decision-making to increase teacher’s job satisfaction and commitment.
Keywords: School Managers, Transformational Democratic Leadership, Leadership Practices and Effectiveness, Teachers’ Outcomes