The Leadership Teachers Want from Principals – Transformational

Abstract

The data shared in this paper is part a preliminary study.  A more detailed and robust analysis of data will be conducted later.  From a randomly generated sample of 135 public schools in the Province of Alberta, Canada 77 agreed to participate in a study on leadership attributes of principals.  Ten randomly selected teachers from each participating school were asked to complete the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio, 1995; 1997; 2000) for their respective principals.  Based on the MLQ results principals were stratified into categories as having high or low levels of transformational leadership qualities.  Ten teachers were then selected for in depth interviews.  For one of the qualitative components teachers from ten schools were selected of in-depth interviews.  Five of the teachers worked with principals that were characterized as highly transformational and five worked with teachers that were characterized as low in transformational leadership attributes (one subsequently withdrew from the study).  The data interpretation allowed for stating that teachers strongly preferred principal behaviors that aligned with selected aspects of transformational leadership.