Leadership behaviours of principals in inclusive educational settings

Reveals the results of a study which investigated the principal’s leadership behaviour in schools which educate moderately and severely disabled students in regular education classrooms on a full‐time basis. More specifically, notes that the purposes of this study were to determine whether the leadership behaviours of principals, as perceived by teachers, tended to be more transformational or more transactional; and whether there was a difference in the leadership behaviours of principals and the extent to which principals motivated teachers to exert effort beyond the ordinary. Forty‐four teachers from five school districts responded to the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) developed by Bass (1985). The independent variable was leadership behaviours of principals, defined as varying degrees of transformational and transactional leadership. The dependent variable was defined as principals’ ability to affect teacher motivation. Shows that the results of the study indicated that principals were perceived by teachers to exhibit more transformational leadership behaviours than they exhibited transactional leadership behaviours. Also, teachers tended to be more highly motivated under the leadership of principals who they perceived to be more transformational than transactional.