Secondary Education Managers/Executives/Administrators
OBJECTIVE The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree to which Kouzes and Posner's Transformational Leadership Model is being practiced by Jordanian school principals.
METHODOLOGY A total of 500 teachers from basic school and 500 from high school each selected via stratified random sampling techniques from Amman, Capital of Jordan, with an overall response rate of 55 percent (N = 550). Respondents completed the LPI-Observer in Arabic, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of internal reliability for this version in a pilot sample was: Modeling (.77), Inspiring (.83), Challenging (.81), Enabling (.80), and Encouraging (.89). Two-thirds of the respondents were female. About one-third had less than five years of teaching experience, 46 percent had 5-15 years of experience and another 20 percent had more than 15 years of teaching experience.
KEY FINDINGS Enabling and Encouraging were the most frequently engaged in leadership practices by principals, followed by Modeling, and then Challenging and Inspiring. Male and female teachers did not vary in their assessments for the leadership practices of Challenging and Enabling. However, males viewed more Inspiring than did female teachers, while female teachers reported greater frequencies than male teachers fo Modeling and Encouraging as well as for “transformational leadership (the sum of all five leadership practices). Basic school teachers perceived their principals as engaging more in Modeling, Inspiring, Enabling and Encouraging than did high school teachers. No differences were found between basic and high school teachers on the leadership dimension of Challenging. No difference in leadership practices were reported among the three experience level groups of teachers.
“The findings of this study revealed that Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Model in Jordanian schools as perceived by teachers are practiced moderately. This result can be justified given the narrow knowledge and experience in this model in Jordanian schools. More attention, thus, should be given to Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Model in Jordanian schools taking in consideration that this Model has been recognized by many researchers as truly representative of highly effective leadership practices and serve as a basis for school principals to assess their leadership strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, it can be suggested that more workshops in Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Model should be conducting in Jordanian schools for practical purpose” (p. 656).