Multilevel analysis of teacher work attitudes: The influence of principal leadership and teacher collaboration

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether the instructional and administrative leadership practices of principals and professional collaboration of teachers predict teachers' self-efficacy and job satisfaction in Turkish middle schools. Design/methodology/approach: By applying a causal comparative design and a multilevel methodology, the current study used OECD's Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) data set to examine the relationships among study variables. The multilevel data included 178 schools/principals and 2,967 teachers. Two-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) method was used to investigate whether principals' leadership and teachers' collaboration predict teacher self-efficacy and teacher job satisfaction, net of several important teacher-level and school-level control variables. Findings: The findings showed that some select aspects of principal leadership and teacher collaborative practices significantly predict teachers' self-efficacy and job satisfaction at within and across schools. Among all independent and control variables, teachers' collaboration appeared to be the strongest predictor of both teacher self-efficacy (β=0.37; η=0.61) and job satisfaction (β=0.16; η=0.40). Originality/value: The areas of significance identified by this study may guide policy makers and practitioners for informed decisions and interventions targeting to enhance teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction. The multilevel methodology utilized by this study may also stimulate future research endeavors for capturing the nested relationships of educational data, otherwise would be unaccounted for at different levels of schooling.