Orphanos, Stelios and Margaret Terry Orr

Learning leadership matters: The influence of innovative school leadership preparation on teachers’ experiences and outcomes - 2014. - Educational Management Administration & Leadership - 21 pages.

School leadership has been shown to exert a positive but mostly indirect influence on school and

student outcomes. Currently, there is great interest in how quality leadership preparation is

related to leadership practice and improved teacher outcomes. The purpose of the study was to

understand the moderating influence of leadership preparation on leadership practices and

teachers’ job collaboration, leadership and satisfaction. The study features a non-experimental

design that combined data from a US study of exemplary leadership preparation and a nationally

representative sample of elementary school principals. The sample consists of 175 teachers whose

principals were prepared in an exemplary leadership program and 589 teachers whose principals

were traditionally prepared. Data were analysed with structural equation techniques and results

have shown that innovative leadership preparation exerts a statistically significant direct effect

on principalship leadership practices and a significant indirect effect on teacher collaboration and

satisfaction. The results provide important policy implications. Investments in leadership preparation influences leadership practices that yield more positive teacher work conditions, which are

essential for improve student learning and as a result leadership preparation program design and

improvement can play an important role in district reform and school improvement.


Leadership
Educational leadership
School leadership
Innovation