The Relationship between Principal Leadership and School Climate: Focusing on the Mediating Effect of Teaching Satisfaction

Objectives This study attempted to examine the structural relationship between principal leadership, teaching satisfaction, and school climate and draw implications. Methods For this, 3,635 data from the 9th year (2020) of the Gyeonggi Education Termination Study were used as analysis targets. By setting school climate as a dependent variable, principal leadership as an independent variable, and teaching satisfaction as a mediating variable, descriptive statistics, correlations, and structural equation model analysis (Structural Equation Model) was conducted using SPSS 23,0 and AMOS 29.0. Results As a result of the analysis, first, it was found that the principal's leadership had a positive effect on the school climate. Second, the principal's leadership had a positive effect on the school climate by mediating the degree of satisfaction with the teaching profession. Third, teaching satisfaction had a negative effect on school climate variables. Additionally, the results of bootstrapping showed that teacher satisfaction was influencing school climate as a mediating variable. Conclusions Based on these findings, suggestions such as the expansion and distribution of principal leadership development training centered on educational administrative agencies, policies and support to create a cooperative and democratic school climate, and school organization-level management to foster teacher satisfaction were presented.