Effects of collegial principal leadership and trust on collaboration and teacher role stress

Abstract

This study examined the relationships between collegial principal leadership, trust in the principal, collaboration, and teacher role stress in rural and urban schools in North Alabama. The sample was initially comprised of schools with K-6 grade configurations, later expanded to include a variety of configurations that had a fourth grade. A total of 60 schools of varying grade configurations agreed to participate in this research and 1,665 teachers voluntarily completed surveys. The four instruments used in this study were the Collaboration Survey, and the Teacher Role Stress Survey, the Omnibus Trust Scale, and the Organizational Climate Index (OCI). Specific subsets were used from the first three instruments for this study. Of the three subsets in the Collaboration Survey, only the Collaboration with Principal and Collaboration Among Teacher Colleagues subscales were included. From the Omnibus Trust Scale, only the Faculty Trust in Principal subscale was included. The Collegial Principal Leadership subscale of the Organizational Climate Index (OCI) was also included. The findings supported the hypotheses. Collegial principal leadership and trust in the principal were significant predictors of collaboration, but only collegial principal leadership made a unique contribution toward collaboration in multiple regressions. As predicted, trust in the principal and collegial principal leadership were inversely related to teacher role stress, with only trust in the principal making a unique contribution. Collaboration also had a significant inverse relationship to teacher role stress. Controlling for SES in multiple regressions did not demonstrate any significant differences in the data.