Linking transformational leadership to teacher commitment and alienation: Do motivational climate profiles moderate?

Abstract

This study aimed to identify schools’ motivational climate profiles and tested how each profile moderates the linkage of transformational leadership with teacher commitment and alienation. Gathering data from 1193 teachers working in 103 schools in Türkiye, we employed multilevel moderation with a latent class variable to estimate the structural links between our variables. The study offered nuanced evidence to the literature by suggesting that sampled schools were categorised under two profiles as high performance and high mastery school climate in terms of their prevalent motivational climate. Our results also provided evidence of the significant moderator role of the school-level profiles on the effect of transformational leadership. Our study suggests that transformational leaders might be more effective in promoting teachers’ collective sense of commitment and eliminating their sense of alienation in schools where a performance-oriented climate is fostered. Key implications for policy and practice around the contextualised nature of school leadership are discussed in this study.