The impact of instructional leadership, professional communities and extra responsibilities for teachers on student achievement

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of instructional leadership, professional communities and extra “non-teaching” responsibilities for teachers on student achievement. Design/methodology/approach For a sample of 214 teachers from 88 primary schools in Pakistan, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to study the factor structure of the items. Correlation and hierarchical regression analysis was done to study the impact of the independent variables on student achievement; directly and through the mediation effect of teacher commitment. Findings The analysis of the data reveals that teacher commitment mediates the relationship between the independent variables and student achievement. Practical implications This study has implications for the education management and policy community in the sense that they should not engage teachers into non-teaching roles and promote instructional leadership within the school managers and help in development of teacher networks which will subsequently add to student achievement. Originality/value The role of teacher commitment in explaining the student achievement has not been researched extensively in the past. The study at hand intends to fill this research gap. Furthermore, the impact of extra “non-teaching” responsibilities on teacher commitment and subsequently the student achievement has not been studied before. Hence, this study is expected to open up a new dimension in this regard.