Propositions and Hypotheses
Hypotheses development requires refining the constructs stated in the research questions (i.e. principal’s leadership style, school environment and school outcome) to measurable indicators. These indicators are used as building blocks for the hypotheses. While the student’s academic performance Isa straight-forward indicator of school outcome, both the principle’s leadership style and school’s learning environment indicators may be relatively challenging. Table 1(Appendix) summarizes the investigated constructs and their corresponding indicators. These indicators were selected based on their suitability to measure the corresponding construct and are based on the questionnaire of the TIMSS data.
The indicators in Table 1 will be used to test the following hypotheses:
1. Schools with an authoritative leadership style, as compared to other leadership styles, tend to have an environment in which teachers are less encouraged to cooperate and collaborate in sharing their instructional learning experiences and material.
2. Principals characterized by an authoritative leadership style tend not to integrate the school’s mission and vision into their school curriculum through involvement in curriculum development as compared to principals who demonstrate other leadership styles.
3. Authoritative school administrations with a lower cooperative environment tend to produce schools with lower student academic achievement (school outcome) than other types of school administrations.
4. Different cultures lead to different principal’s leadership style and role expectation, both of which result in different school environments, thus different school outcomes.