Abstract
This study was concerned with investigating the relationship between instructional leadership and emotional intelligence of principals and their association with the professional development of teachers in Gauteng province, South Africa. Due to educational reforms in South Africa post-democracy (1994), the role of the principal has become more challenging and dynamic. Among other things, school principals are responsible for the professional management of the school, implementing all curricular activities and implementing policy and legislation. Principals must understand that their role as a leader is to be responsible for promoting harmony and a sound work ethic within the school community and beyond. To meet these challenges, principals need to become directly involved in the teaching and learning processes, which can only be achieved if they become instructional leaders. It can then be concluded that where the leader is directly involved in the planning of curriculum and staff professional development, the impact on student outcomes is likely to be greater.
This research was conducted in the pragmatic paradigm using factor analysis to investigate the structures of instructional leadership, emotional competence, and professional teacher development. To determine causal direction, the study made use of mediation and moderation analysis which indicated the links present between the latent variables present in instructional leadership and emotional intelligence and their linkages with professional teacher development and training. Three valid and reliable instruments were employed in the data collection process, namely a shortened version of The Emotional Intelligence Appraisal – Me Edition to measure the level of principals’ emotional intelligence, the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS) questionnaire which was designed to provide a profile of the facets involved in the principals’ instructional leadership, and a third which collected data of teachers’ levels of professional learning and development through a Professional Learning Communities Assessment.
Descriptive statistics were employed to obtain biographical profiles of the participants in respect of attributes such as age, gender, qualifications, and experience and to outline the nature and distribution of participants’ responses to the data collection instrument. Inferential statistics, more specifically mediation and moderation analysis,
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which is a regression technique that measures the relationship between two or more sets of interval data, was employed.
Findings indicated that firstly, principals used behaviours associated with instructional leadership; secondly, principals were perceived to usually be involved with emotional intelligence, and thirdly, principals created a culture of collaboration and support. Teachers felt that the principals showed a high level of leadership and were directly involved in the creation of a culture of collaboration and support which had a positive effect and supported professional teacher development. Finally, there was an indirect effect of instructional leadership on professional development via emotional intelligence. Hence, emotional intelligence can act as mediator between instructional leadership as independent variable and professional teacher development as outcome. Moreover, it was also found that emotional intelligence acts as a moderating variable between instructional leadership as input and professional teacher development as output and that the effect is largest when teachers perceive those principals are almost always or always utilising behaviours associated with emotional intelligence.
KEYWORDS: emotional intelligence, instructional leadership, professional teacher development, professional learning communities, PIMRS, education leadership instruction, learning-centered leadership, mediation, and moderation analysis.