Facilitating Change in Schools: Is There One Best Style?

This study examines the various ways principals provide leadership for school improvement and the relationship of these “change facilitator styles” to school effectiveness in the different contexts in which they work. Results of this study of 472 teachers in 53 schools indicate that principals exhibited different leadership styles across effectiveness and SES categories. Effective low SES schools were more likely to have strong, assertive initiators as principals than were ineffective low SES schools, and responders were more likely to be principals in ineffective schools. The results only partially replicated the findings of two earlier studies associating effective middle SES schools with manager‐types. Principals were not characterized by their teachers as having pure styles ‐ initiator, manager or responder ‐ but rather as employing a combination of behaviors as they worked to bring about changes or improvements in their schools. These styles existed along a continuum from initiator to responder. An investigation of the scales used to measure change facilitator style in this study indicated that it should be perceived as a unidimensional construct. The results have implications for the selection and matching of principals and schools within districts based on, among other factors, the predominant change facilitator style of the principal and SES and effectiveness characteristics of the school. If school improvement efforts are to be successful, perhaps an appropriate matching of principal and school characteristics is a beginning point.