The Schools Principal's Leadership Style Influence on Teamwork Skills of Teachers in Arab Schools in Israel

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to examine the influence of a principal's leadership style on the teachers' teamwork and to recommend principal's management strategies to increase teachers' teamwork. The research population is from The Triangle, a concentration of Israeli Arab towns and 352 teachers participated in the study, of which 275 were women (78.1%) and 77 were men (21.9%), most of them in the age range of 35-55. The teachers teach in middle schools and high schools. The study findings showed that there are positive relationships of moderate and significant correlations between all the school principals’ leadership style and the teamwork skills of teachers. While high levels of leadership (transformative, transactional and laissez-faire) the teachers reported about their school principal, were associated with high levels of teamwork skills of the teaching staff. In addition, it was found that the correlation between transformative leadership and teamwork skills is slightly lower than the correlation between transactional or laissez-faire leadership and teamwork skills, due to the Arab traditional culture.

Keywords

• transformational leadership
• transactional leadership
• laissez-faire leadership
• teamwork skills
• arab schools