Abstract:

Introduction:
Educational leadership is an essential ingredient for ensuring that every child gets the education he/she needs to succeed. It has been called the "bridge" that can bring together the many different reform efforts in ways that practically nothing else can.

Purpose of the study:
The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors and characteristics that affect educational leadership in the UAE.
This research tries to find out answer to the following question:
1. What are the most effective features influencing effective educational leadership from the perspective of teachers?

Significance of the study:
The result of this study will help the Ministry of Education to take suitable decision in holding specialized training courses for schools leaders. Moreover, the results of this study may help learners themselves to upgrade their professional development to obtain the characteristics of effective leaders.

Participants:
Stratified sampling of schools was selected according to the type of the school. Then teachers were selected randomly. 18 schools were selected; nine males schools and nine females. From the males schools 2 high schools, 2 preparatory and 2 elementary were selected randomly. The only three modal schools from each level were purposively selected. The same had been done with the female schools. 400 teachers; 200 males and the rest females; were selected randomly from the 18 schools. 22 teachers from each school were selected randomly. Their ages varied between 20 to more than 40 with the experience between 3 to more than 15 in teaching.

Instrument:
The study conducted a survey for educational employees, as school teachers. The questionnaire was distributed to the teachers in Al-Ain schools. It contains 36 close- ended questions and one open- ended question with six main categories. The survey was divided into three parts:The first part asks questions about the demographic information of the participant, such as age, gender, qualification, years of experience and the nationality.The second part has six categories each with six sub-features. These categories are modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, encouraging the heart and having a global mind-set. After each category, the participants suppose to choose the most important sub-feature.
The third part of the questionnaire has one open-ended question where the participants can order the three most important features of the effective educational leadership.

Results:
The findings of this study lead to find out eight most important features from the perspectives of teachers. From the perspectives of teachers effective school leader is the one who: a) Treats people with dignity and respect. b) Encourages and praises people for their jobs. c) Plans ahead. d) Sets a personal model of what expected. e) Actively listens to diverse point of views. f) Experiments and takes risks. j) Cooperatively supports team work. h) Expresses confidence in peoples' abilities.

Keywords:

School leadership.