The Study Of How School Leadership Influences On Student Achievement In Rural Western Schools

Since the 19th National Congress of the CPC put forward the strategy of rural vitalization,the poverty-stricken areas,especially the poor quality of rural education problem has become an important factor restricting the quality of education.However,the national and local government’s investment in rural education is also increasing year by year,but the increase of these funds only makes rural education reduced by economic constraints on the surface,and does not change its essence.From this point of view,it is difficult to improve the quality of rural education only by external governance,and more importantly,it is to improve its internal motivation.As the core figure of a school,the principal is particularly important for the improvement of school education quality.It is one of the important measures to revitalize rural education to give full play to the role of the principal and make the leadership of the principal become the new driving force for the real development of education in poor rural areas.The influence of school leadership on student achievement has been widely concerned by scholars since the 1980 s.From the previous researches,it is generally believed that school leadership has a great influence on student achievement.Recently,school leadership has become an important indicator to measure the quality of schools and it has been found the second most influential factor associated with student achievement after teaching influence.However,from the current research,whether the influence of school leadership on student achievement is direct or indirect has not been decided yet.This maybe mainly due to the complexity of school leadership.In this research,we selected a number of middle schools in poor areas in western China to examine the role of school leadership on student achievement based on the framework proposed by Leithwood’s team.The results showed that only ”emotions path” and ”organizational path” had significant mediating effects between school leadership and student achievement.The results also fully showed that the path of school leadership affecting student achievement was affected by many factors.In addition,although previous studies have proposed that there may be some interactions between key variables in each path,they have not verified.Therefore,in this study,on the basis of previous researches and our prophase research,we focused on the rural western areas and take the "emotions path"for testing the effects of school leadership on student achievement.In the same time,collaborative culture which belongs to ”organization path" was selected as a moderator variable to build an interaction model.This not only expands and enriches the relevant research on school leadership,but also provides an objective basis for the revitalization strategy of rural education,which is of great significance.In this study,the research objects were divided into three groups: students,principals and teachers.Firstly,5692 students were invited and completed the survey and the PISA tests(Mainly include reading literacy,mathematics literacy and science literacy).Their age ranged between 14 and 17 years(The average age is 15).Secondly,principals’ self-report and teachers’ report were used to collect data on school leadership,teacher commitment,teacher trust in others teacher collective efficacy,collaborative culture and other variables.The questionnaire of ”the Teaching and Leading in Schools Survey Scale” in China which was designed and authorized by Leithwood’s team.Finally,the school names had been used as the identifier to match the principal’s survey results with their students’ PISA results,using the ” Many-to-Many” command in STATA software.The matching data was displayed as follows: In principals’ self-report model,because of the missing of either students’ test results or principal’s survey data,there were only 34 principals from 34 schools were successfully matched with their1223 students(M age = 15.35,SD = 1.28,female = 647,52.9%;male = 576).In teachers’ report model,there were 841 teachers were successfully matched with their3134 students(M age = 14.84,SD = 0.74,female =1673,male =1461).In this study,SPSS 25.0 and PROCESS 3.2 were used to analyze descriptive statistics,correlation analysis,mediating effect test and moderating effect test 。 The main process and conclusions of this study were as follows:Firstly,clarify the role of school leadership on student achievement.This was the research conducted in response to the debate of whether school leadership influences student achievement directly or indirectly.In this study,we analyzed and compared the influence of school leadership on student achievement under two different models:principals’ self-report and teachers’ report.In terms of overall results,there were significant differences between principals’ self-report and teachers’ report regarding school leadership and student achievement.In the principals’ self-report model,there was mainly direct effect of school leadership on student achievement,but in the teachers’ report model,the indirect effect of school leadership on student achievement was supported.This is mainly because in principals’ self-report,principals tended to emphasize their own contributions and influences which was a natural consequence of their self-centered belief that they could directly influence students.However,in teachers’ report,teachers tended to emphasize the role of the organizational learning mechanism in the pathway which made them support the indirect effect of principal leadership.Secondly,construct the mediating effects of "emotions path" between school leadership and student achievement.This was the main content of this study,which examined the role of "emotions path" in the influence of school leadership on student achievement in rural areas of western China.The mediating effect results showed that:teacher commitment,teacher trust in others,and teacher collective efficacy from "emotions path" all play significant mediating effects between school leadership and student achievement.Besides,these mediating effects were different from different literacy achievements(reading literacy,math literacy,science literacy)and report models(principals’ self-report and teachers’ report).In addition,in principals’ self-report,teacher trust in others and teacher commitment were proved as a serial mediating effect.Therefore,in this study,it was believed that the mediating effect of "emotions path" could be influenced by many factors,which also had some implications for future related studies.Thirdly,construct a model of the moderating effect of collaborative culture on school leadership and student achievement through the "emotions path".This was the difficulty and ultimate goal of this study.The variables and models that played the significant role in mediating effect testing were sorted out and then the moderator variable of collaborative culture was added to construct the interaction term between school leadership and collaborative culture to examine the moderating effect of collaborative culture in the "emotions path".The moderating effect was shown:collaborative culture played a significant moderating effect on the mediation path of teacher commitment and teacher trust in others,but not on the path teacher collective efficacy.Besides,this analysis showed that school leadership had a more positive association with teacher commitment and teacher trust in others when collaborative culture was higher than when it was lower.However,in principals’ self-report,the moderating effect of collaborative culture was negative due to the negative mediating effect of teacher commitment,and the research results showed that the negative effect was more obvious under the low collaborative culture.This result also illustrated the importance of collaborative culture from one side.In addition,this study selected Zhuang students and teachers in western rural schools as subjects to conduct preliminary verification of the previously constructed "emotions path" model,and explore the influence of school leadership on student achievement of the path model in ethnic minority groups,in order to test the stability of the model.There were 412 students were successfully matched with their teachers(M age = 14.86,SD = 0.71,female = 224,54.4%;male = 188,45.6%).The results of model verification showed that the model was stable to some extent,and verify the mediating effect of "emotions path" on the relationship between school leadership and student achievement as well as moderating effect on the mediation path of "emotions path".However,we also get some different conclusions: for example,teacher collective efficacy and teacher commitment were proved as a serial mediating effect in Zhuang adolescents.Collaborative culture played a significant moderating effect on the mediation path of emotions.However,the moderating effect was more significant only under the higher collaborative culture,but not under the lower collaborative culture.From these results,this study believed that Zhuang students should pay more attention to the cultivation of teacher collective efficacy.On the one hand,these results indicated that "emotions path" model of school leadership affects student achievement established in this study has certain stability,on the other hand,these results also indicated that the path model of school leadership influencing on student achievement may have different conclusions in different ethnic cultures,which provided some inspiration for future studiesAlthough this study had shown some innovative conclusions that had played a certain reference role in enriching relevant research on school leadership.However,this study has some limitations.As a preliminary model of the interaction between variables included in the four paths,due to the limitations of sampling(especially principal group),time and other aspects,the generalization of some research conclusions need to be further improved.This was a large-scale quantitative study,which could provide a representative sample and some reliable but superficial findings.In future,we need to adopt some qualitative approaches such as field studies,interviews,and even ethnographic observations to get a more in-depth understanding of the practices and effects of school leadership in rural schools.In addition to the above deficiencies,this study also has some innovations.First,two modes of principals’ self-report and teachers’ report have adopted in this study comprehensively.From the research results,principals’ self-report mainly supports the direct influence of school leadership on student achievement.However,the teacher’s report mainly supports the indirect influence of school leadership on student achievement,which to some extent has been breaking through the previous debate on whether school leadership has a direct or indirect influence on student achievement.Secondly,the role of collaborative culture from the "organizational path" and the variables in the "emotions path" was explored for the first time in this study,which is also the second innovation of this study.The study also confirmed that collaborative culture plays a moderating role in the "emotions path" of school leadership affecting student achievement.Finally,this study puts forward some policy suggestions:(1)Strengthen professional training for principals to enhance their leadership.(2)Transform the principal’s school leadership function to pay attention to teachers’ emotions support.(3)Create a collaborative cultural atmosphere to enhance teachers’ emotions input.(4)Strengthen the construction of teachers in the context of educational accountability.(5)Establish scientific monitoring and evaluation mechanism to improve human capital anti-poverty.