School leadership and teachers' attitudes towards school change: The case of high schools in Greece

Abstract

The Principal's role as facilitator of school change as well as school climate and teachers' previous experience of school changes on teachers' attitudes towards change were investigated. Participants in this study were 318 high school teachers working in urban and rural areas all over Greece. Measurement instruments included: a) the Principals' Change Facilitator Style Questionnaire (Hall & George, 1999), b) a scale based on the 18 items of the Attitudes Towards Change Inventory by Dunham, et al.(1989) and 13 items from the Multidimensional Response to Planned Change (Szabla, 2007) together with three subscales concerning the cognitive, behavioral and affective attitudinal components, following factor analysis, c) a 29-items questionnaire assessing the school climate for change and innovation and d)a scale assessing 9 different emotions resulting from past experiences of school changes. Perceptions of the principal as 'responder' to change (low level of facilitation) were held by 33% of the teachers and were associated with less positive attitudes towards school change. Half of the teachers perceived their principal as 'manager' of change (medium level of facilitation) and only 17% as 'initiator'. All three components of teachers' attitudes towards change were significantly correlated with the perceived degree of school change facilitation by the school leader. Hierarchical regression showed that negative emotions resulting from previous experience of changes in school had a negative effect on teachers' attitudes, after controlling for the effect of leadership style. © Common Ground, Jasmin-Olga Sarafidou, Dimitrios I. Nikolaidis.