The teacher's perception of the principal's leadership behavior and faculty morale : their impact on student achievement

Purpose. The purpose of this investigation was to study the impact of the principal's leadership behavior and faculty morale on student achievement (language, reading, and math), as perceived by classroom teachers. The research identified those factors of principal's leadership behavior as perceived by the teacher, and teacher morale that impacted significantly on student achievement. Procedure. Sample. Sixty-five elementary teachers in the Port Neches Independent School District participated in this study. Teachers in this population had at least one year's teaching experience and one or more years of supervision from the principals whose leadership behavior they were describing. Instruments. The Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) was used to allow teachers to describe the leadership behavior of their principals, and the Ohio Inventory of Employment Morale was utilized to assess the morale of teachers. The LBDQ measured two principal dimensions of leader behavior, Initiating Structure and Consideration. The Ohio Inventory measured two dimensions of teacher morale. Job satisfaction and Pride and Confidence. The Pearson product moment correlation and the multiple regression were utilized at the alpha .05 level of significance to test the hypotheses. Findings. Contrary to what was hypothesized, no significant, positive impacts were found between the teacher's perception of the principal's leadership behavior, faculty morale and student achievement (language, reading, and mathematics). Conclusions. The only generalization possible is to the population of schools from which the sample was drawn (those factors being urban, small populations and the use of grades 3, 4, and 5). All of the hypotheses stating that leader behavior of the principal and faculty morale, as perceived by the teacher, are significantly related to student achievement (language, reading, and mathematics) are rejected.