Principals' Instructional Leadership Among Catholic Elementary Schools

Elementary school principals seek to maintain a strong and consistent vision, and to use a variety of leadership skills that build a shared vision with an array of stakeholders. Current scholarship offers a model of a school as a learning community for keeping both teachers and students engaged in learning. The current research has examined the leadership behaviors of Catholic elementary school principals and the way the needs of a school's learning community impact principal's leadership behaviors. Using the 161 respondents of the invited population of 529 elementary school teachers as participants in this study, the researcher sought to understand the influence of principals' instructional leadership behaviors on teachers. The research assessed principals' leadership behaviors, with an adapted form of the Inventory of Strategies Used by Principals to Influence Classroom Teaching (Blase and Blase 1998). This is a 32 item questionnaire that asked teachers to assess to how principals conduct instructional conferences, facilitate staff development and foster improved teaching. Eight independent variables are used to determine how the characteristics of a school's principal and faculty influence principals' leadership behavior. The learning community model was the theoretical framework for these leadership actions. Teachers assessed their principal's instructional leadership as having a mild effect on classroom instruction. None of the independent variables; school type, school size, minority enrolment, school tuition, teacher's total years of experience, teacher's grade levels taught, teachers' experience at present school, or principal's experience in the present school, exerted a statistically-significant impact on the teachers' perception of their principals' instructional leadership behaviors.Doctor of Educatio