The Correlation between the Principal's Leadership Style and the Commitment of Teachers in Arab Schools in Israel

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to examine the influence of principal's leadership style on the teachers' commitment. The research question is: What is the correlation between the school principal's leadership style and teachers' sense of commitment? The research population is from The Triangle, Israeli Arab towns and villages adjacent to the Green Line. The settlements are home to approximately 300,000 Arab citizens of Israel, representing about 24%% of Israel's Palestinian Arab population who are Muslim. 352 teachers participated in the study. The teachers teach in middle schools and high schools. The research tools used in the study include two questionnaires: 1) Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire – MLQ by Bass and Avolio (1990). 2) The Allen and Meyer (1990) commitment to school questionnaire. Hypothesis H1 was confirmed, the study findings showed that there are positive relationships of moderate and significant strengths between all leadership indicators and commitment indicators. while high levels of leadership (transformational, transactional and laissezfaire) the teacher reported about his principal, are associated with high levels of affective and continuance commitment. In addition, it was found that the relationship between transactional leadership and affective commitment is (slightly) stronger than the relationship between transformational leadership and affective commitment.

Keywords

• transformational leadership
• transactional leadership
• laissez-faire leadership
• affective commitment
• continuance commitment