Academic Leadership Skills and Professionalism of Senior Academic Leaders from Educators’ Viewpoints

Background: An efficient performance evaluation mechanism is essential for senior educational managers to ensure accountability and continuous improvement in educational systems. This study aimed to develop an academic leader’s evaluation instrument and evaluate senior academic leaders at Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences. Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted in two phases in 2022-2024. In the first phase, an evaluation instrument of academic leaders was developed and validated from the viewpoint of educators. Also, content validity was assessed using quantitative content validity indices with the participation of 17 experts. The internal consistency of the instrument was assessed with the participation of 50 faculty members. In the second phase, the performance of senior academic leaders was examined from the perspective of educators. Data was analyzed using descriptive tests (Mean, SD, percentage). Results: The evaluation instrument was developed with 34 items in two categories of professionalism (12 items) and educational managerial performance (22 items). The content validity of the instrument was confirmed by Scale-Level Content Validity Index (S-CVI/Ave) =0.89. The internal consistency of the instrument was reported Cronbach's alpha = 0.82. The results showed that the performance of professional behavior (4.52 ± 0.12) and educational managerial performance (4.49 ± 0.11) of academic leaders of colleges were evaluated at the desired level. Conclusion: In the present study, the instrument may be used in the education system for measuring the performance of academic leaders in the two domains of professional behavior and educational management performance. The present results showed that the adherence of academic leaders to professional principles was reported at a desired level.