The relationship between school leadership and student mathematics achievement

Abstract

School leadership acted an important function in student achievement. This study explored the relationship between school leadership of principal and student mathematics achievement in primary schools from a comparative perspective of Germany and Chinese Taipei. The author used TIMSS 2011 data collected from 3,961 fourth-grade students and 197 school principals in Germany and 4,138 students and 150 school principals in Chinese Taipei respectively, to examine the relationship between school leadership and student mathematics achievement with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM), and to distinguish the difference in school leadership styles with latent class analysis (LCA). The comparable results revealed a negative relationship between school leadership and student mathematics achievement in Germany but a non-significant relationship in Chinese Taipei. However, the three sub-dimensions of the construct of school leadership, that is, setting vision/goal, school management, and maintain the school climate were significantly associated with student mathematics achievement in both economies, except for setting vision/goal for school in Chinese Taipei. The latent class analysis identified four leadership styles in Germany, that is, the distributed leadership style (26%), the integrated instructional and transformational leadership style (27%), the transformational leadership style (7%), and the instructional leadership style (40%), and two in Chinese Taipei, that is, integrated instructional and transformational leadership style (36%), and the mixed integrated instructional and distributed leadership style (64%). This study aimed to reveal the direct relationship between school leadership of principals and student mathematics achievement. And the results suggested that the influence of school leadership on student mathematics achievement was indirect, meanwhile, the leadership styles were firmly associated with school contexts.