Principals' leadership and teachers' motivation: Self‐determination theory analysis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between educational leadership and teacher's motivation. The research described here was anchored in the convergence of two fundamental theories of leadership and motivation: the full range model of leadership and self‐determination theory. The central hypotheses were that transformational leadership would predict autonomous motivation among teachers, whereas transactional leadership would predict controlled motivation. The authors further predicted that autonomous motivation would mediate the relations between transformational leadership and teachers' burnout and that controlled motivation would mediate the relations between transactional leadership and burnout.Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaires assessing the variables of interest were completed by 122 Israeli teachers.Findings – Results, based on structure equation modeling, supported the hypotheses, suggesting that leadership styles among school principals play a significa...

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