The relationship of instructional leadership, teacher's organizational commitment and students' achievement in small schools
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Date
2010-06
Authors
Ponnusamy, Premavathy
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Abstract
The leadership of the headmasters is known to be a key factor in supporting teachers’ performance in
terms of their organizational commitment and students’ achievement. Teachers play an important role
in educating the future members of the society especially in primary schools where effective teaching
and guidance leads to the country’s academic advancement. The researcher feels that this study is
very timely as the Ministry of Education focuses more on small schools’ instructional leadership in
order to evaluate their effectiveness. Based on the importance of the contribution of primary schools
to the Malaysian Education System, this study was aimed at investigating the relationship between
instructional leadership, teachers’ organizational commitment and students’ achievement in primary
schools especially in small schools. This study used quantitative methods in order to obtain the
relationship between the instructional leadership, teachers’ organizational commitment and students’
achievement. Data were collected using two questionnaires, Hallinger’s (1983) The Principal
Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS) – Teacher Form and Organizational Commitment
Questionnaire (Malay version) by Abdul Ghani Ganeson (2002) adapted from Mowday, Steers and
Porter (1979). These questionnaires were distributed to the teachers in 14 small primary schools and
the data was analysed with SPSS Version 16.0 using correlational research design and the hypotheses
were tested. The regression analysis showed that instructional leadership practice was partially related
to the internal orientation dimension of organizational commitment. Out of three dimensions of
instructional leadership, only two dimensions (D1 & D3) had a significant and a positive influence on
the internal orientation of organizational commitment. There was also a positive relationship between
the external orientation dimension of teachers’ organizational commitment and students’ academic
achievement. However, there was an insignificant relationship between instructional leadership and
students’ achievement. Although the under-enrolled schools are small organizations, the results of this
study are still similar to the earlier findings. Nevertheless, there was a mediating effect of external
orientation dimension of teachers’ organizational commitment on the relationship between
instructional leadership and students’ academic achievement. Even though small schools undoubtedly
contribute towards the country’s overall academic performance, research on the effectiveness of these
schools is rarely conducted. Therefore, the findings of this study, especially the implications and
recommendations would be beneficial and could be added to future literature. It would also be
interesting to evaluate the link between the three dimensions of the instructional leadership, internal
orientation of organizational commitment, external orientation of organizational commitment and
students’ academic achievement in larger samples, and across different states. The researcher feels
that time constraints was a limiting factor in this study and recommends that future research should
use mixed methods, both qualitative and quantitative, in order to obtain a detailed outcome.
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Keywords
Business Administration , Instructional Leadership