Teachers’ perceptions of school leaders’ empowering behaviours and psychological empowerment: Evidence from a Singapore sample
Using a convenience sample of 289 teachers in Singapore, this study examined: (1) whether there were significant differences between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours; and (2) teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in relation to teachers’ psychological empowerment. Results indicated that teachers perceived their principals and immediate supervisors as exercising empowering behaviours in their daily practices, but they also perceived their principal and immediate supervisor differing in magnitude in some specific dimensions of empowering behaviours such as delegation of authority, providing individualised concern and support, articulating a vision and fostering collaborative relationships.
Results also indicated that teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours were positively associated with teachers’ psychological empowerment, and that they added unique variance to each other in predicting teachers’ psychological empowerment. This study suggests the importance of considering teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours as two distinct constructs in empirical research so that their unique predictive power could be more aptly captured. From a practical standpoint, it suggests the importance for school leadership developers to enhance school leaders’ awareness and capacity in exercising empowering behaviours towards their teachers in their daily practice. Essentially, schools may stand to gain from developing empowering leaders at different levels of management to promote teachers’ psychological empowerment.
Development and validation of the School Leader Empowering Behaviours (SLEB) scale
Despite a growing interest in using empowerment as a leadership strategy to enhance teachers’ work motivation to play a more central role in educational change, there is still limited research on how leaders in school organisations empower teachers. One possible reason might be due to the lack of relevant measures for assessing empowering behaviours of leaders in the educational contexts. This study developed and validated the School Leader Empowering Behaviours (SLEB) scale in the Singapore educational context. A convenience sample of 304 teachers from the Singapore schools participated in the study. The sample was randomly split into two sub-samples, Sample 1 (N = 142) and Sample 2 (N = 162). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted in Sample 1 to determine the number of factors and select the items. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted in Sample 2 for cross-validation to confirm the factorial structure of the scale and examine the model-data fit. Results from both EFA and CFA provided support for a seven-factor SLEB scale as well as a higher order factor structure. Each sub-scale of the SLEB showed good internal consistency reliability and predictive validity. The potential uses of the SLEB scale were also discussed.