Teachers’ self-efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism: Linking social justice leadership, transformational leadership, and psychological capital

This study examined the moderating influence of transformational leadership on the relationship between social justice leadership and teachers’ psychological capital to seek empirical evidence for transformative social justice leadership. The research was conducted with 991 teachers across 97 schools using multilevel structural equation modeling. The findings demonstrated significant positive associations between principals’ social justice leadership and transformational leadership practices with all dimensions of psychological capital: self-efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism. Furthermore, the interaction between social justice leadership and transformational leadership was positively associated with all dimensions of psychological capital. The study revealed that principals’ high levels of transformational leadership enhanced social justice leadership's capacity to improve teachers’ psychological capital. These findings highlight the potential of integrating transformational and social justice leadership into a unified framework, conceptualized as transformative social justice leadership, and its critical role in enhancing teachers’ self-efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism, particularly in times of intense educational and economic pressure.