This chapter explores the effective leadership style for positive school culture as perceived by some Malaysian Northern State school teachers. This chapter uses focus group and open-ended questions to have in-depth understanding and testing of the participants' ability of suggesting or predicting the best or most effective school leadership style for building school positive culture for best leadership practices. The participants were teachers from different schools in Northern States Malaysia undertaking master program in educational management at Universiti Utara Malaysia. The findings revealed that transformational leadership style was rated, predicted, and ranked as the best leadership style for school principals to apply in building positive school culture according to their context while distributed leadership and instructional leadership could be also considered as the second leadership styles for building positive school culture in the Northern schools of Malaysia.
TopIntroduction
School leadership is fundamental in accomplishing and sustaining of school success. School leaderships exerts considerable influence on teacher practices and instructional delivery in classroom, which makes it a contributory factor for student achievement in schools. Sustaining school success, however, rests in the ability of principals to establish clear directions for daily operations in their schools, to develop school values and to wield influence on the management of instructions in the classroom (Garza, Drysdale, Gurr, Jacobson, & Merchant, 2014). Thus, a principal is a central feature in achieving school success (Smith, 2007). For several decades, research evidence cutting across varieties of fields has emerged about leadership and leadership styles, including the education domain. Indeed, a plethora of studies on school leadership have been conducted and consensus has been reached that school leadership is a key factor influencing learning, student achievement and school success (Leithwood, Seashore, Anderson, Wahlstrom, 2004; Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2000; Sebastian & Allensworth, 2012).
Over the years, attention has been shifted to the study of educational leadership and school outcomes. Particularly, researchers in the field of educational management have attempted to identify the links between school leadership and school culture. Emerging research evidence has established the significant role that leadership plays in the initiation, development and sustaining of a high-quality school culture (Kythreotis, Pashiardis, & Kyriakides, 2010; Flores, 2004; Dimmock & Walker, 2000; Berry 1997; Grace, 1995; Deal and Peterson, 1994; Roberts, 1993; Leithwood and Jantzi, 1991; Sashkin & Sashkin, 1990; Schein, 1985). School principals are ultimately responsible for the success of their schools even though they are not directly involved in the classroom.
School leadership goes beyond teacher, student or instructional supervision and is a multifaceted concept involving several components (Bonnici, 2011). Every school possesses its own attributes that often reflect deep patterns of values, beliefs and custom that have been formed over the course of its history and can be perceived upon entering (Deal and Peterson, 1990). Identifying, learning and understanding values in the daily actions of individual members of the school is an essential element in the development of a high-quality culture that will bring about continuous improvement for proper administration and sustainable development in school (Roberts, 1993; Robinson, 1996).