A Conceptual Paper on Relationship Between Principals’ Instructional Leadership and School Effectiveness Through The Moderator: Teachers’ Self-Efficacy

Abstract

With rapid development of China, China’s urbanization rate has continued to increase, which  has triggered the migration of rural school-age children. Rural schools are facing such difficulties as student sources decreasing, scale shrinking, and school merging, resulting in the survival problem of a large number of small rural schools. This research aims to examines the relationship between instructional leadership and teachers’ self-efficacy and the moderator role of teachers’ self-efficacy on the relationship between instructional leadership and school effectiveness to promote the school effectiveness in rural countries in China. Although most studies have examined the direct relationship between principals’ instructional leadership and school effectiveness, there are also studies have proven that through the path, the principals’ instructional leadership can improve the school effectiveness. Based on a review of related studies on the working conditions of rural teachers, many studies focus on external objective factors such as salary, job rotation, and exchange, with few studies on the rural teachers’ self-efficacy.  The study will adopt a quantitative method. An correlational research will be employed to examine the relationship between variables. Population will be the primary teachers (male and female) from different rural schools in China. The findings of the study will be analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The implication of this study is that except the direct relationship between instructional leadership and school effectiveness, principals’ instructional leadership also can influence the school effectiveness through teachers’ self-efficacy to a greater extent.