The Effect Of Leadership Styles on School Organizational Health and Organizational Climate as Perceived by Teachers in Small Rural High Schools in South Texas

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of south Texas secondary teachers in determining if leadership styles practiced by high school administrators had an effect on the organization’s health and school climate.

METHODOLOGY
The population for the study consisted of three small, rural high schools in south Texas, located near the United States/Mexico border. The schools were all public schools and received local, state, and federal funding to support all school programs. The schools varied in size but were similar in demographics. The sample populations included 80 teachers who completed the Leadership Practices Inventory Observer, the Organizational Climate Descriptive Questionnaire for Secondary Schools (Hoy, Tarter & Kottkamp, 1991) and the Organizational Health Survey for Secondary Schools (Hoy, et al., 1991).

KEY FINDINGS
Enable was the leadership practice reported as most frequently engaged in by principals, followed by Encourage, Inspire, Model, and then Challenge. None of the leadership practices were significantly related to the organizational health and climate constructs. However, the author notes: “the researcher did find moderate effect sizes in some of the MANOVA tests conducted. The effect size was important to have in significant outcomes because the researcher can determine the strength of the association between the independent variable and the dependent variable (Leech, Barrett, & Morgan, 2015). Although, no significant differences were found in the eight multivariate tests performed, the researcher determined that small to moderate effect sizes in five of the eight multivariate tests yielded a practical importance of the effect of leadership styles on the organizational health and climate of a school even though the sample size was small” (p. 107).