The Antecedents of primary school principals' management and leadership behaviors

This study explores the relationship between management and leadership behaviors of primary school principals from the perspective of personal and contextual variables. Although the school effectiveness literature has put much attention to school principals' behavior outcomes, however, a few studies have investigated the background of principals' behaviors. The
sample of this study was consisted of 140 primary school principals, who were chosen randomly from three of the six educational districts in Israel. For the purposes of this piece of work two anonymous Likert-type questionnaires were used: the Instructional Leadership Inventory and the School Administrator Assessment Survey. Data analysis revealed that school principals' management behaviors were mostly influenced by contextual factors whereas their leadership behaviors were mainly
affected by personal factors. It was also found that the principals' demographic variables had different effects upon their management and leadership behaviors. Besides it was indicated that staff and community characteristics affect both school principals' management and leadership behaviors