The Correlation Between the Principal’s Leadership Style and the Commitment of Teachers in Arab Schools in Israel

The present study examines the influence of the principal’s leadership style on the teachers’ commitment. The research question is: What is the correlation between the school principal’s leadership style and teachers’ sense of commitment? The research population is from The Triangle, a concentration of Israeli Arab towns and villages adjacent to the Green Line. The settlements are home to approximately 300,000 Arab citizens of Israel, representing about 24%% of Israel’s Palestinian Arab population who are Muslim. 352 teachers participated in the study, of which 275 were women (78.1%), and 77 were men (21.9%), most of them in the age range of 35-55. The teachers teach in middle schools and high schools. The research tools used in the study include two questionnaires: 1) Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire – MLQ by Bass and Avolio [1990], which includes 36 items that measure nine leadership styles indices. 20 items examine transformational leadership, 12 items examine transactional leadership, and 4 items examine Laissez-faire leadership. 2) The Allen and Meyer [199] commitment to school questionnaire. The questionnaire includes 16 items, 8 first items examine affective commitment to the organization and 8 last items examine continuing commitment to the organization. The scale is between 1 and 4. Hypothesis H1 was confirmed, the study findings showed that there are positive relationships of moderate and significant strengths between all leadership indicators and commitment indicators while high levels of leadership (transformational, transactional and laissez-faire) the teacher reported about his principal, are associated with high levels of affective and continuance commitment. In addition, it was found that the relationship between transactional leadership and affective commitment is (slightly) stronger than the relationship between transformational leadership and affective commitment.