STRENGTHENING THE CORE: A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES AND SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’ EFFICACY

Abstract

The role of secondary school leaders has changed from a typical bureaucratic one to one that is more dynamic and instructional and aims to maximize pedagogical quality and teacher capacity. The current study was empirical research that aimed to explore how the instructional leadership competencies of secondary school heads relate to teachers' professional self-efficacy in public sector schools of Punjab (Pakistan). The study was based on the Instructional Management Framework (IMF) of Hallinger and the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) of Bandura and examined the effects of the following leader behaviors on teachers' instructional confidence: setting a school mission, managing the instructional program, and promoting a positive learning climate. The data were collected using a positivist paradigm and descriptive-correlational survey research design in which 400 secondary school teachers in both the institutional domains of rural and urban were sampled at random. The data was collected using two standardized and validated scales; Instructional Leadership Competence Scale (ILCS) and Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES). The SPSS v28.0 software was used for the analysis of the data, which included descriptive statistics, Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency check, Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient analysis, linear regression and an independent samples t-test. The factor wise alpha values showed good reliability from 0.74 to 0.89. The findings showed that there was a statistically significant strong positive correlation between the school heads' instructional leadership competencies and secondary school teachers' self-efficacy (r = 0.684; p < 0.001). The results of simple linear regression analysis showed that instructional leadership competencies predict the teacher efficacy profile with a significant amount of variance (B = 0.672, t = 16.421, p < 0.001). The independent sample t-test results showed that teachers' gender had no significant effect on the teachers' perception about the instructional leadership, leading to the conclusion that the instructional leadership benefits male and female teachers equally. In the study, it is recommended that educational directorates give special attention to the mandatory instructional leadership training frameworks, professional learning communities and collaborative coaching paradigms for school leaders to achieve school improvement and maintain the teaching quality.