INVESTIGATING THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE COLLABORATIVE CULTURE AND THE FULL RANGE LEADERSHIP MODEL IN ALL-DAY PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN GREECE

Abstract

The investigation of the leadership behavior and the collaborative culture adopted by the teachers in the all-day primary schools in Greece and their subsequent interaction formed the basis for conducting the research, part of the results of which are presented in this article. Its field of application was a randomly selected nationwide sample of 782 teachers, while as research tools to record their perceptions were used the School Culture Survey - Teacher Form (S.C.S.-T.F.) questionnaire to assess the six dimensions (collaborative leadership, teacher collaboration, professional development, unity of purpose, collegial support and learning partnership) that shape the model of collaborative school culture and the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (M.L.Q. 5X-Short) to assess the three (3) styles of leadership behavior (transformational, transactional, laissez-faire leadership). The quantitative data collected were processed in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, version 24). Descriptive, correlational analysis followed, and statistical tests were performed to answer the research questions. The findings clearly demonstrate that teachers adopt the collaborative culture model to a satisfactory degree (M=3.55), applying several forms of collaborative behavior, as reflected by the descriptive analysis of their perceptions of the six (6) dimensions/factors that shape the profile of the model with a variation of mean values from (M=3.35) for the dimension teacher collaboration to (M=3.71) for the unity purpose. In addition, the findings concerning the dominant form of leadership model in Greek public all-day primary schools, as perceived by classroom teachers and/or school leaders, highlight the transformational leadership behavior (M=2.97) as the dominant, one transactional leadership behavior (M=2.25) as secondary choice, while their distancing from the laissez-faire leadership model (M=1.39) is evident in the specific field of research. From the multiple regression analysis it is found that 40.5% of the variation of the transformational leadership variable is interpreted statistically significantly by the variation of the independent variables of the collaborative culture, while their classification in terms of their importance in the prediction is as follows: collaborative leadership (Beta=0.353, p˂0.05), teacher collaboration (Beta=-0.176, p˂0.05), professional development (Beta=0.053, p>0.05), unity of purpose (Beta=0.181, p˂0.05), collegial support (Beta=0.231, p˂0.05) and learning partnership (Beta=0.054, p>0.05). The 18.4% of the variation of the transactional leadership variable is interpreted statistically significantly by the variation of the independent variables of the collaborative culture, while their classification in terms of their importance in the prediction is as follows: collaborative leadership (Beta=0.113, p˂0.05), teacher collaboration (Beta=0.382, p˂0.05), professional development (Beta=0.081, p˂0.05), unity of purpose (Beta=-0.133. p˂0.05), collegial support (Beta=-0.192, p˂0.05) and learning partnership (Beta=-0.043, p>0.05). The 11.1% of the variation of the laissez-faire leadership variable is interpreted statistically significantly by the variation of the independent variables of the collaborative culture, while their classification in terms of their importance in the prediction is as follows: collaborative leadership (Beta=-0.152, p˂ 0.05) teacher collaboration (Beta=0.460, p˂0.05), professional development (Beta=0.016, p>0.05), unity purpose (Beta=-0.178, p˂0.05), collegial support (Beta=-0.168, p˂ 0.05) and learning partnership (Beta=-0.052, p>0.05).

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