Impact of school leadership on reading literacy in rural China: the differentiated models of principals’ self-report and teachers’ report

Abstract The impact of school leadership (SL) on reading literacy (RL) has been extensively examined using either principals' self-reports or teachers' reports. However, principals and teachers might have divergent, even contradictory, views on the path from SL to RL. Therefore, this study aimed to explore and compare the principals’ self-reported and teachers’ reported models with teacher commitment (TC) as a mediator and collaborative culture (CC) as a moderator of the relationship between SL and RL. Whole group sampling was employed to sample the 106 junior middle schools in City X from western China. About 841 teachers from 80 classes/schools were successfully matched with their 3134 students ( M age = 14.84, SD = 0.74, female = 1673, male = 1461), and about 34 principals from 34 classes/schools were matched with their 1223 students ( M age = 15.35, SD = 1.28, female = 647, 52.9%; male = 576, 47.1%). The results indicated that: (1) there were significant differences between principals’ self-reports and teachers’ reports regarding SL and RL; (2) the direct impact of SL on RL was found in the principals' self-reports but not in the teachers’ reports; and (3) an indirect effect of SL on RL with TC as the mediator and CC as the moderator was found in the teachers' report model. The distinctive models in this study demonstrate principals' and teachers' different views on SL's impact on RL and provide empirical evidence to support both the original and the revised Claim # 1.