Building a Common Project by Promoting Pedagogical Coordination and Educational Leadership for School Improvement: A Structural Equation Model

Abstract

Leadership and teaching practices are the most important factors that affect student learning. Many studies have pointed out the combination of both of them in a common project as a guarantee to achieve school improvement. The present study sets out to define and contrast an explanatory model of pedagogical coordination as a function of management leadership, collaborative working, setting common goals, participation in decision making, involvement of teaching staff and professional development of teachers, in a sample of pedagogical leaders from secondary schools. A final sample of 547 participants from Granada and Jaen (Spain) was obtained. An instrument adapted from the DLI questionnaire (Hulpia 2009) was administered. Path analysis was conducted, which displayed good model fit for all considered indices (χ2 = 10.937; df = 2.187; p < 0.001; CFI = 0.998 TLI = 0.993; GFI = 0.994; RMSEA = 0.047). The main result was the identification of positive relationships between all dimensions of the questionnaire. It can be concluded that management plays a key role in the establishment of common goals at the school. Another important finding was that collaborative conditions should be present to favour the involvement and professional growth of the teacher. In summary, the existence of all of these conditions leads to high levels of all indices of pedagogical coordination in the examined secondary schools.