Educators jump ship: A study of leadership style and teachers' job satisfaction

This study examined how and to what extent principals' leadership styles impact teachers' job satisfaction. This quantitative study examined the principals' leadership style based on teachers' perceptions. The teachers completed the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 2000) and the Teachers' Job Satisfaction Questionnaire, TJSQ (Lester, 1982). Also examined was teachers' demographic data in comparison to their answers of the MLQ and TJSQ. A significant correlation between several of the MLQ variables and the TJSQ variables were found when computing the Pearson's correlation coefficient for the bivariate combination of MLQ and TJSQ to assess the relationship between principals' leadership style and teachers' job satisfaction. The strongest correlation existed between the supervision variable of the TJSQ and the variables of the MLQ survey instrument. In assessing teachers' demographics and teachers' perceptions, the Pearson's correlation coefficients were computed for the bivariate combination of demographic variables with MLQ and TJSQ variables. Once again there were several significant relationships found. Overall, it was found that when the TJSQ and MLQ variables were correlated at the elementary and high school level, there were several variables that were significantly correlated with one another. For both research questions, there is evidence to suggest that the items examined in this study are significantly correlated with one another. Recommendations for future studies are to replicate this study taking a larger sample population (both elementary and high school). The findings from this study are important for the education field because improvements could be made in leadership styles and teachers’ job satisfaction.