The influence of instructional leadership of middle managers on teacher commitment through professional learning community and the role of trust in leader as a moderator.

Amin, Nor Aiza Zamzam. The influence of instructional leadership of middle managers on teacher commitment through professional learning community and the role of trust in leader as a moderator. School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia.

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Abstract

This study investigates the influence of instructional leadership of middle managers on teacher commitment, professional learning community (PLC) as the mediator and trust in leader as the moderator on the relationship between instructional leadership and teacher commitment. This study is designed using the survey method. The questionnaire was adapted from Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS) by Hallinger and Murphy (1985), Professional Learning Community Assessment (PLCA) by Huffman and Hipp (2003), Omnibus T-Scale by Hoy and Tschannen-Moran (2003) and teacher commitment by Nordin (2007). The questionnaire was administered to 400 secondary school teachers based on their geographical locations which have been clustered into zones using a multi-stage sampling. The hypotheses were tested using mean score, multiple regression procedure and hierarchical multiple regression as specified by Baron and Kenny (1988). The study shows that instructional leadership practised by the middle managers, PLC, trust in leader and teacher commitment were at a high level. Secondly, managing instructional programme had the most influence on teacher commitment. In addition, both managing instructional programme and developing positive learning climate had the same impact on PLC. It is also discovered that all dimensions of PLC functioned as partial mediators between monitoring student progress and teacher commitment to school. The result of the study also indicates that instructional leadership was positively related to teacher commitment. The relationships between all the seven dimensions of instructional leadership and teacher commitment to student were stronger among teachers with high trust in leader than among those with low trust in the leader. In conclusion, instructional leadership and the practice of PLC were able to increase the commitment of teachers. In addition, teachers’ trust in leader also plays an important role in improving teacher commitment. One of the implications gained from this study is that it is timely for the principals to share the responsibilities as instructional leaders with their middle managers as the post as senior assistants can be considered as a training ground for the principalship and also as a starting point for most of the senior assistants who expect to move into other areas of school management. One of the recommendations for future studies is to have a mixed-method study in order to get a detailed insight of what is really happening in the school when investigating the instructional leadership, PLC, trust in leader and teacher commitment, like interview, observation and documentation.

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