Educational Philosophy and Leadership Style of School Principals

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to assess the relationship between Educational philosophies and Leadership styles of school principals. The study is descriptive and correlational in nature and aims at answering the following two main questions: 1. Is there a correlation between the type of educational philosophies and leadership styles of school principals? 2. Can the principals’ educational philosophies, predict their leadership styles? The population of the study consists of the school principals in West of Mazandaran of which 118 school principals were selected through a ‘stratified sampling approach. For data collection the following couple of measures were made use of: Assessment of Educational Philosophy" and “Bowles’ Leadership Styles and Preferences Audit Tool”. For data analysis, indices of central tendency, canonical correlation, and Pearson's coefficient of determination were used. The results show that there is a Canonical Correlation between different educational philosophies and leadership styles. Moreover,‘Coefficients Determined Estimates’ show that:‘Essentialism philosophy’ can explain the leadership style of "creativity and innovation"; ‘Perennialism philosophy’ can explain the leadership style of "Self-Direction". ‘Progressivism philosophy’ can explain the leadership style of "Recognition and Career Advancement"; while the ‘Reconstructionism philosophy’ can explain the leadership style of "creativity and innovation". ‘Behaviorism philosophy’ can explain the leadership style of "Drive and Determination" and "Working with Others and Building Commitment". Finally, "Existentialism philosophy" can explain the leadership style of "Drive and Determination".

Keywords


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