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At role conferences, high school deputy principals are continually re‐examining their role in the schools. Increasingly, in school level co‐operative evaluation programmes they are analyzing their work and its contribution to school effectiveness. This paper attempts to develop a classification that would provide a useful framework within which, at both system level and school level, they might examine their behaviour and consider modifications. From a Queensland study, five dimensions of leader behaviour are identified. They are Consideration, Classroom Facilitation, Staff Utilization, Authoritarianism and Routinisation. Other behaviours identified from the literature are Teacher Classroom Contact and School Management Maintenance tasks. These seven behaviours can involve interaction with either of two groups of people; clients and colleagues, thus providing a 14 segment grid that deputies might use to classify their behaviour when considering what they are doing in schools and what might be done better.

Reorganizing schools and managing through teams is seen as a way to achieve school goals, especially in educational contexts that are highly focused on measurable student achievements. This shift to shared leadership requires principals to play a key role in promoting school management team (SMT) outcomes. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate how principals' personality traits and behavior complement each other and combine in an integrative model of SMT effectiveness. Specifically, the research aims to examine the mediating role of principals' internal and external boundary activities between principals' traits from the Big Five typology, namely, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience and neuroticism and SMT effectiveness.

Data were collected from two sources to minimize problems associated with same-source bias. In total, 92 SMTs and their principals from 92 public schools in Israel participated in the study. Overall, 295 SMT members and 92 principals were included in the sample. Data were aggregated at the school level of analysis. The theoretical model was tested with structural equation modeling. The bootstrapping procedure, to ascertain the presence of indirect effects, was employed.

The findings of structural equation modeling indicated that principal external activities partially mediated the relationship of conscientiousness and extraversion to SMT effectiveness, providing support for an integrated trait–behavioral model of leadership for SMT effectiveness.

As schools involve increasingly interconnected professional networks based on relationships, acknowledging that SMT effectiveness may be influenced by principals' personality traits that translate into leadership behavior may clarify the implications of principals' traits for educational teams. Importantly, the proposed integrative model points to possible mechanisms linking principal traits, behaviors and effectiveness by positioning principals' boundary activities as one possible mechanism through which principal traits facilitate SMT effectiveness. The findings can help deepen our understanding of which kinds of principals engage in boundary activities, contributing to the discussion of what factors influence principals' practices with implications for school managers' selection practices.

The study from which this article is derived was carried out in eight diversely located primary schools in the United States of America. Each had implemented the system of Individually Guided Education (IGE) several years previously; and each was chosen from among 42 schools that had already been randomly selected and studied by researchers from the Wisconsin Research and Development (R & D) Centre because they met several predetermined operational criteria. One of the several questions investigated in the study concerned the impact of the principal's leader behaviour on the decision‐making processes used in the schools, each of which was typified by the principal sharing leadership responsibilities with a representative cabinet type leadership committee, called the Instructional Improvement Committee (IIC). Field methodology incorporating interviews, observations and questionnaires was used to collect the data. In this article the background to the study is presented, the theoretical considerations of educational leadership relevant to the question explored are outlined, the research methodology is described, the pertinent collected data are tabulated and analysed, the major findings concerning the leader behaviour of the principal are reported, and the implications for practice set down. The conclusion is drawn that the leadership of the principal is a crucial factor in the functioning of the IIC.

This article, the first empirical study of its kind, presents findings from a larger qualitative study of principal mistreatment of teachers. A grounded theory method was used to study a sample of 50 US teachers who were subjected to long‐term mistreatment from school principals. The authors discuss descriptive, conceptual, and theoretical findings about principals’ actions that teachers define as mistreatment. In addition, the inductively derived model briefly looks at the harmful effects of principal mistreatment and abuse on teachers, psychologically/emotionally and physically/physiologically. Implications of study findings are discussed for administrator and teacher preparation, for school district offices, and for further research.

Middle schools are becoming increasingly more pervasive ‐ all but replacing traditional junior high schools. Because they are neither elementary nor high schools, the organizational climates of middle schools are unlikely to be adequately tapped by standard measures designed for other structures. Conceptualizes and develops a measure of the organizational climate of middle schools, generates a typology of school climates based on openness, and tests the relationship between climate and authenticity in teacher and principal behaviour. Finds that openness in the school climate is directly related to authenticity in both.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating effect authentic leadership (AL) has on professional identity (PI), ethical climate (EC) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and political behavior (PB) among elementary school principals in Israel.

Four hundred and ten elementary principals from various Israeli districts participated in the study. The research is based on principals' self-report questionnaires. The analysis focused on SEM using AMOS software.

Results indicated that AL fully mediates the relationships between PI and OCB and PB while partially mediates the relationships between EC and OCB and PB.

This study could contribute to the design of an integrative model not previously researched, while exploring relationships between behaviors perceived as mutually opposite. This study suggested that to increase OCB and decrease PB, authentic leadership among elementary school principals should be enhanced by educational leaders.

The new model is likely to help school principals to deal with political behaviors while fostering citizenship behaviors during their work. Educational leaders may design professional training for principals in order to encourage the development of the positive aspects of OCB and PB.

The purpose of this study is to explore the mediating role of workplace attitudes: professional identity and career aspirations between perceptions of principals’ authentic leadership and teacher behaviors: intent to leave, organizational citizenship behavior, counterproductive work behavior, lateness and intention to leave among teachers.

The sample was composed of 605 teachers, randomly selected, nested in 41 Israeli elementary, junior high and high schools. Data analysis was based on multi-level structural equations.

The findings indicated that the more the school was perceived by the teachers as having an authentic leader, the professional identity of the teachers was higher and was negatively associated with counterproductive work behavior toward colleagues in the school, while the teachers’ career aspirations were higher and negatively associated with counterproductive work behavior toward the organization.

This study shows the importance of teachers’ individual and collective perceptions and their impacts on teacher behaviors. The practical contribution may include encouraging principals to promote high standards of authentic leadership, to raise teachers’ professional identity and their career aspirations and reduce teachers’ counterproductive work behavior and intention to leave.

Reveals the results of a study which investigated the principal’s leadership behaviour in schools which educate moderately and severely disabled students in regular education classrooms on a full‐time basis. More specifically, notes that the purposes of this study were to determine whether the leadership behaviours of principals, as perceived by teachers, tended to be more transformational or more transactional; and whether there was a difference in the leadership behaviours of principals and the extent to which principals motivated teachers to exert effort beyond the ordinary. Forty‐four teachers from five school districts responded to the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) developed by Bass (1985). The independent variable was leadership behaviours of principals, defined as varying degrees of transformational and transactional leadership. The dependent variable was defined as principals’ ability to affect teacher motivation. Shows that the results of the study indicated that principals were perceived by teachers to exhibit more transformational leadership behaviours than they exhibited transactional leadership behaviours. Also, teachers tended to be more highly motivated under the leadership of principals who they perceived to be more transformational than transactional.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among faculty trust in the principal, principal leadership behaviors, school climate, and student achievement.

Data from 64 elementary, middle, and high schools in two school districts formed the basis of the study (n=3,215 teachers), allowing for correlational and regression analyses of the variables.

The authors found that faculty trust in the principal was related to perceptions of both collegial and instructional leadership, as well as to factors of school climate such as teacher professionalism, academic press, and community engagement. Student achievement was also correlated with trust, principal leadership behaviors, and school climate. The authors found that both of the composite variables, principal behaviors and school climate, made significant independent contributions to explaining variance in student achievement and that together they explained 75 percent of the variance in achievement.

Limitations of the study include the use of a single form to collect participants’ responses that may have elevated the degree of correlations, as well as the exclusion of rural schools from the sample.

The findings of this study suggest that principals must foster and maintain trust in order to lead schools effectively. Importantly, trust has both interpersonal and task-oriented dimensions. Thus, principals must be prepared to engage collegially with teachers in ways that are consistently honest, open, and benevolent, while also dependably demonstrating sound knowledge and competent decision making associated with administering academic programs.

Situated in a conceptual framework of systems theory, this study explored the interplay of faculty trust in the principal, principal behavior, school climate, and student achievement. The findings suggest that it is necessary for principals to evidence both interpersonal and task-oriented behaviors in order to be trusted by teachers. Furthermore, the strength of the relationships suggests that schools will not be successful in fostering student learning without trustworthy school leaders who are skillful in cultivating academic press, teacher professionalism, and community engagement in their schools.

Describes a study which investigated the relationship between the vision and five dimensions of leadership behaviour of principals in Hong Kong. A survey was carried out on 48 secondary schools involving 548 teachers. Half of the sample schools were in a pilot scheme of school‐based management, the school management initiative (SMI). Factor analysis and multiple regression were used to analyse the data. The results suggested that five dimensions of leadership behaviour were all significantly related to the vision of principals for both types of schools. Whether the school was participating in the SMI or not also had a significant effect on the relationship between the vision of principals and three dimensions of leadership behaviour. Contrary to the expectations of the SMI and the suggestions by some researchers that teachers need to be particularly empowered in schools undergoing reforms, the findings of this study demonstrated that for principals with average and below average scores on vision, the degree of empowerment perceived by teachers in schools under the SMI was lower than for schools not under the reform. However, principals with high vision in schools under the reform had the highest scores in all five dimensions of leadership behaviour. The SMI may provide opportunities for leaders with vision to bring about a better environment for school improvement. These results provide important insights for those responsible for the implementation and evaluation of the SMI in Hong Kong, and perhaps for other systems devolving decision‐making power to more self‐managing schools.