| A Study in Perceptions of Elementary School Principals' Engagement Levels in Best Leadership Practices and Student Achievement The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Southern California elementary principals' self-perceptions of their engagement in best leadership practices, teachers' perceptions of their principals' engagement in best leadership practices, and student academic outcomes as measured by California's Academic Performance Index (API) between the school years 2010-2011 to 2012-2013. This study utilized Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Practice Inventories (LPI) (2013) as the instrument to measure perceptions of leadership practices. Analyses of the data included the strength of the following relationships: the principals' self-perceptions and their respective teachers' perceptions of the principals' engagement in best leadership practices, and student achievement. Ten Southern California elementary principals and sixty-three of their respective teachers, grades one through six, representing six Southern California unified school districts, participated in this study. Principals and teachers assessed the principals' leadership practices via the Kouzes and Posner's (2013) on-line LPI surveys which measured the principals' engagement in thirty leadership behaviors on a ten-point Likert scale, which were divided into five best leadership practices as identified by Kouzes and Posner (1995): Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart. The results of this study indicated principals' self-perceptions of their engagement in best leadership practices were strong in the five leadership practices, with the weakest engagement in Inspire a Shared Vision. Teachers perceived their principals' engagement in best leadership practices as strong in the five leadership practices, with the weakest engagement in Encourage the Heart. Both principals and teachers' evaluation of the principals' strongest engagement was in the leadership practice Enable Others to Act. The correlation between principals' self-perceptions of their engagement in best leadership practices and student academic achievement indicated no relationship. The correlation between the teachers' perceptions of their principals' engagement in best leadership practices and academic achievement indicated a moderately strong relationship. |
