PREDICTIVE VALIDITY OF GENDER AND EXPERIENCE OF TEACHERS INTO MALAYSIAN WOMEN PRINCIPAL’S INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP PRACTICES

Abstract

Malaysia, as a developing country, highly depends on its education system to achieve the Vision 2020 goal of being a developed nation. Therefore school leadership plays a key role in educational settings. As a great number of women principals are involved in leadership positions in this context, this study examined the factors influencing women principal's instructional leadership practices from teachers' perceptions through a survey instrument distributed to 39 Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur public secondary schools. Total of 357 teachers were randomly selected as the sample. The Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale encompassing 50 items was applied to find out the levels of instructional leadership practices of women principals. The quantitative data were analyzed by means, standard deviation, Pearson correlation and multiple regression. The results exhibit a moderate level of women principals' instructional leadership practices from the viewpoints of teachers in these schools. The positive inter-relationship among the dimensions of instructional leadership practices were found while experience of t were significantly perceived on women principal's instructional leadership practices. The findings show that women principals require well-organized training to enhance their learning and teaching in secondary schools and fill up the gap on relationship between women principal's leadership practices and teacher's demographic variables.