The effect of school principals instructional leadership behaviors on teachers job satisfaction

Many research during the last two decades has shown that there is a strong link between school principal's instructional leadership behaviors and effective schools, student achievement and teacher performance. As a result of this, the importance of principal's role as an instructional leader has grown in recent years and the effect of principal's instructional leadership behaviors on student achievement and teacher performance has been the focus of recent research. In this research, it was aimed to examine the effect of school principals' instructional leadership behaviors on teachers' job satisfaction. A sample of 552 teachers in Kağıthane district in İstanbul participated in the descriptive study. The Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale was used to obtain teachers' perceptions of their principals' instructional leadership behaviors. The Job Satisfaction Survey was used to determine the job satisfaction levels of teachers. Data were analyzed using t-test, Tukey post-hoc, and regression. The results of the study indicate that school principals "almost always" behave as instructional leaders and teachers are not highly satisfied with their job. The most important result of the study is that school principals' instructional leadership behaviors have effect on teachers' job satisfaction. According to the results, communicating the school goals, coordinating curriculum, maintaining high visibility, providing incentives for teachers, promoting professional development for teachers, developing high academic standards affect teachers' job satisfaction in a positive way, but, supervising and evaluating instruction, monitoring student progress, protecting instructional time affect teachers' job satisfaction in a negative way. On the other hand, framing goals and providing incentives for students have no effect on teachers' job satisfaction. Key Words: Instructional Leadership, Teachers' Job Satisfaction