The Influence of Principal’s Role, Work Motivation, and School Culture on Elementary School Teachers’ Competence

This study aims to examine the impact of the principal’s role, teacher work motivation, and school culture on the competence of elementary school teachers in Petarukan District, Pemalang Regency. Teacher competence is a key factor in enhancing the quality of education and learning outcomes. This quantitative research used an ex post facto design with a sample of 242 teachers from 80 elementary schools selected through stratified random sampling. Data were collected using questionnaires and analyzed with multiple linear regression. The results indicate that the principal’s role has a positive and significant effect on teacher competence, contributing 34.6% to the variance. Teacher work motivation also positively and significantly impacts competence, contributing 36.0%, while school culture exerts the strongest positive and significant influence, contributing 43.4%. Collectively, these three variables explain 54.0% of the variance in teacher competence. Among the principal’s role dimensions, the entrepreneurship development dimension is the strongest predictor, while teacher motivation reflects a balance of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The instrumental dimension of school culture, emphasizing recognition and collaboration, emerges as the most dominant factor. Teacher competence encompasses pedagogical, personality, social, and professional aspects, with personality competence being the most dominant. These findings highlight the critical synergy between the principal’s role, teacher motivation, and school culture in enhancing teacher competence to improve the quality of learning. This study recommends strengthening principal supervision, fostering teacher motivation, and cultivating a supportive and collaborative school culture.