Measuring the importance of pedagogical leadership according to the stakeholders’ perception

Abstract

There are numerous studies on pedagogical leadership, but there is a lack of instruments for measuring pedagogical leadership based on the contextual and cultural characteristics of the Spanish educational system. The purposes of this study were to examine the factor structure of the Pedagogical Leadership Scale (PLEADS), to test the measurement invariance properties of the factor structure of the PLEADS across groups of principals, directing team members, and teachers; and to study the effect of the types of assessors and assesses on the determination of the importance of leadership. This study collected data from 2,107 stakeholders. Of these, 62.32% were females, and 37.64% were males (0.04% didn´t answer). The stakeholders assessed the importance of pedagogical leadership for 729 principals, 330 other directing team members, and 1,048 teachers. Multigroup confirmatory factorial analysis is performed to test the invariance of the factor structure. Multiple linear regression analyses were employed to assess the influence of the type of leader and stakeholder on the leadership score. Participants assessed pedagogical leadership of the three groups using a single factor structure. The results supported that PLEADS can be well applied to assess the perception of the importance of pedagogical leadership by stakeholders, and cross-group comparisons of the PLEADS can be made. These findings provide evidence of the validity, reliability, and invariance of the PLEADS in Spain that can be applied in other countries.

Key words: Pedagogical leadership, stakeholder perspective, confirmatory factor analysis, measurement invariance, psychometrics, Spanish context.