Leadership in school renewal: examining consistency across orientation, principles and implementation

Purpose There has been a strong emphasis on leadership in school renewal (SR) to promote educational improvement. The literature discerns three major aspects of leadership in SR (orientation to SR, SR principles and practices (PP) and implementation fidelity and integrity). As a methodological advancement for the field of educational administration, we introduced a general analytical framework to measure the consistency of the three major aspects of leadership in SR. Design/methodology/approach With 556 teachers from 41 elementary, middle and high schools, we developed a general multivariate, multilevel model as a primary tool to measure and evaluate the consistency of effort perceived by teachers across the three major aspects of leadership in SR. Findings We found that teachers were consistent in their ratings of the three major aspects of leadership in SR (correlation from 0.737 to 0.828), particularly between SR PP and implementation integrity and fidelity. We found that schools were highly consistent in their effort across the three major aspects of leadership in SR (correlation from 0.942 to 0.991), particularly between orientation to SR and SR PP. This consistency across the three major aspects of leadership in SR was not influenced by school characteristics. Originality/value This study extended our knowledge on SR some further by asking whether leadership in SR is consistent across its three major aspects. In addition to this conceptual advancement, we attempted methodological advancement for the field of educational administration. We introduced a general (extendable) multivariate, multi-level model as a primary analytical tool that can effectively measure and evaluate the consistency of the three major aspects of leadership in SR.