Conceptualising the mediating paths linking effective school leadership to teachers’ organisational commitment

Abstract

The present study is a developmental review that aims to conceptualise, using empirical data, the mediating paths connecting effective school leadership (i.e. transformational leadership and distributed leadership) to teachers’ affective and normative organisational commitment. The review is based on empirical studies on teachers’ organisational commitment published in peer-review journals during two decades. Data analysis resulted in an integrative conceptual model where two central paths – socio-affective factors and teachers’ psychological capital – mediated the impact of effective school leadership on teachers’ organisational commitment. This synthesised model, with its higher-level generalisability, extends the scope of previous research and may stimulate interest in new empirical explorations in effective school leadership research.