The Relationship Between Transformational Leadership Practices and Developing a Professional Learning Community

Abstract

This quantitative study investigated self-perception of elementary school principals' leadership practices and the impact of these practices on developing and fostering a professional learning community within their schools. Fifty-nine elementary school principals, from school districts located in south central Pennsylvania, participated in this study. Five schools were selected to obtain additional responses from professional staff members working within the schools. Independent variables of principal's gender, highest level of education, and years of administrative experience were requested. Additional information regarding the size/population of the school staff and the size/population of the student body were collected to add to the analysis. The exemplary leadership practices were assessed by using The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) by Kouzes & Posner (2003) and consisted of five leadership practices: Challenging the Process, Inspiring a Shared Vision, Enabling Others to Act, Modeling the Way, and Encouraging the Heart. Principals and professional staff members, from the five selected schools, provided perceptions of their schools as learning communities by completing the School Professional Staff as Learning Community (SPSLC) questionnaire, developed by Shirley Hord (1996). The learning community dimensions assessed by the SLSPC are: Principal's Facilitative Leadership, Shared Visions for Improvement, Collective Creativity and Learning, Classroom Observations and Feedback, and School Conditions and Capacities. Descriptive statistics, One-way Analysis of Variance, and Correlation coefficients were tests used to respond to the research questions. The results of my study indicated that the principals perceived they were engaging in transformational leadership practices and that their schools were developing as professional learning communities. The data analysis also showed that a relationship does exist between the transformational leadership practices, of the principals, and the schools developing as professional learning communities.