Examination of relationships between transformational and transactional leadership styles of school principals and collective efficacy and self-efficacy of teachers

Self-efficacy and collective efficacy are the concepts manifested in social cognitive theory. Social cognitive theory could make important contributions to understanding and explaining how a person behaves particularly in organizational environment. Self-efficacy and collective efficacy perceptions of teachers are significant variables influencing their performances during the teaching process. School principals play a very crucial role in forming self-efficacy and collective efficacy of teachers. This study dealt with the relationships between leadership styles of the principals and teachers? efficacy beliefs.This study aims to determine whether there is a relationship between transformational and transactional leadership styles of primary school principals and self-efficacy and collective efficacy of teachers. More specifically, the present study aims to test whether there is a direct relationship between transformational and transactional leadership styles of primary school principals and self efficacy of teachers or an indirect relationship by means of collective efficacy, within the framework of path analysis. To this end, two different models were developed to show the relationships between transformational and transactional leadership styles of primary school principals and collective efficacy and self-efficacy of teachers. The first model considered collective efficacy as the mediator variable between transformational and transactional leadership and self-efficacy. The second model tested collective efficacy as the moderator variable between transformational and transactional leadership and self-efficacy. As is seen, this is a study in which both mediator and moderator analyses were tested by means of path analysis.This is a descriptive study in which relational survey model was used. Transformational and transactional leadership styles were handled as independent variables, while collective efficacy and self-efficacy perceptions of the teachers were considered as dependent variables in the model developed for the relationship of transformational and transactional leadership with collective efficacy and self-efficacy of teachers. In addition, it was also considered necessary to compare teachers? perceptions concerning all the variables in the study in terms of gender, seniority and field, for especially collective efficacy is relatively a new topic.The sample of the study consisted of the 813 teachers serving their time in 50 primary schools in the central districts of Ankara (Altındag, Cankaya, Etimesgut, Golbasi, Kecioren, Mamak, Sincan and Yenimahalle). The sample was chosen through stratified sampling.In collecting the Research data Multifactor Leadership Questionairre (Bass ve Avolio, 1995), Collective Teacher Efficacy Scale (Goddard, Hoy, Woolfolk-Hoy, 2000) and Teacher?s Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran, Hoy, 2001) have been used. Lisrel 8.71, AMOS and SPSS 15.00 programs were used in analysis of the data. Path analysis was used in order to test hypothesis models in the study. Pearson Moments Product Correlation Coefficient, Independent Sample T Test and One Way ANOVA techniques were also applied in the present study.As a result of the study, it was found that transformational leadership and self efficacy are both directly related to each other and indirectly related by means of collective efficacy. As for transactional leadership, it was found that there is no direct relationship or indirect relationship by means of collective efficacy between transactional leadership and self-efficacy. Furthermore, it was seen that transactional leadership is in a negative correlation with collective efficacy. This result indicates that the model relating to the mediator test was verified. The results of the moderator test showed that the moderating effects of both transformational leadership and transactional leadership styles on collective efficacy were not significant. Further, teachers? perceptions about variables of the research were analyzed comparatively according to the variables of gender, seniority, and field. The results of these analyses indicate that perceptions of teachers about transformational and transactional leadership styles of school principals do not vary according to gender, seniority, and field. Collective efficacy perceptions of teachers varied in accordance with gender, seniority, and field. As for self-efficacy, it was realized that teachers? perceptions varied significantly according to gender and seniority but did not vary according to field.