Abstract:

A significant part of the research on educational management and leadership focuses on the influence of processes and mechanisms in effective schools on school outcomes (Özdemir et al., 2022).

One of the prevalent school outcomes in these studies is the academic achievement of the students (Chenet et al., 2022; Leithwood et al., 2020). Research has shown that the school principal has a central role in promoting reforms and processes designed to improve school outcomes by demonstrating effective management styles such as pedagogical (Liu et al., 2021), transformational (BellibaŞ et al., 2021), and distributional (KilinŞ et al., 2022). In recent years, Leathwood and his colleagues (Leithwood et al., 2020) have united these management styles under the definition of "school leadership."

Although there is a significant body of research on educational management and leadership, there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding the definition of effective leadership and the effects of the mechanisms and reflections of school outcomes in developing populations (BellibaŞ et al., 2021; Walker & Hallinger, 2015). The current study filled some of this void.

This study aimed to test a hypothesized model of school outcomes as measured by the proportion of students eligible for a matriculation certificate in terms of teachers' traits (work satisfaction, self-efficacy, age, gender, and education) and their perception of the school principals' leadership as reflected in their management styles and practices.

Data were collected from 461 teachers in 19 Arab high schools in Israel using a questionnaire composed of 77 items. Techers' perceptions of the principal's management style(s), work satisfaction, and self-efficacy were measured on a Likert scale with six response options, where 1 indicated strongly disagree and 6 strongly agree.

Findings indicated a satisfactory fit of the model to the data, and the explanatory variables accounted for a large amount (50%) of the variance in the school outcome as measured by the proportion of high school students eligible for matriculation certificates. Principal's leadership (high scores on the examined management styles) exerts a direct positive effect on school outcomes in addition to indirect effects through teachers' satisfaction and self-efficacy.

The findings imply improvements in school outcomes through effective leadership, combining the strengths of four management styles. Furthermore, the findings can inform principal training programs and principal performance evaluation.

Keywords:

School leadership, school outcomes, teacher satisfaction, teacher self-efficacy.