A study on effective principal leadership factors in China

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find out what are the effective school principal leadership (ESPL) factors or indicators that Chinese teachers consider or expect. It explains how and why ESPL factors are important for effective school improvement (ESI). It tries to expand the domain knowledge of ESPL. Design/methodology/approach – The questionnaires consisted of eight factors and 40 indicators. The rating instrument was a five point Likert Scale (from 1 to 5). In total, 100 school teachers in Liaoning Province of mainland China were participated and surveyed. Factor analysis,t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the collected data. Findings – This study provides empirical insights about what ESPL factors that Chinese teachers considered. According to the results oft-test and one-way ANOVA, there were no significant differences between and among the respondents’ gender, areas and years of teaching experiences in rating the ESPL factors. The findings argue that the 16 extracted ESPL indicators have not only revealed the expectations of Chinese teachers toward their school principals, but also have drawn a three-dimensional-image of what a good and effective school principal should be. From the Chinese teachers’ eyes, a good school principal should not only possess good managerial skills in the aspects of time and routine work (such as self management, time management, influence, decision making and commitment) but also should possess good emotional intelligence, human skills, more attentiveness and consideration toward the needs of their followers (such as comfort, communication skills and empathy, etc.). Practical implications – This study provides implications for all school stakeholders, particularly for school principals, school leaders and educational managers both in and outside of schools. A good school principal should possess good ESPL characters/factors. If not, at least he/she should be aware of the ESPL characters/factors and actively adopt or adapt them. Thus the ESPL factors or indicators extracted from this study can be served as a mirror and a useful knowledge. Originality/value – This study belongs to very few of this kind of researches carried out in mainland China. Its findings have made some contributions to the ESPL research in mainland China, to the research of school leadership and ESI.