School principals’ leadership types and student achievement in the Italian context: Empirical results from a three-step latent class analysis

This study investigates the existence of various leadership types in a sample of lower secondary school principals across Italy ( n = 1073). Information is obtained using a questionnaire about instructional practices and leadership perceptions administered by the National Evaluation Committee for Education (INVALSI). Employing a latent class analysis (LCA) for the specification of the educational production function (EPF), we identify three subgroups of school leaders: educative leaders (49% of the total sample), who support school improvement that utilises teachers’ skills; leaders who teach (35%), who are actively present in the classroom; and transactional leaders (16%), who support the school and balance various viewpoints. We then analyse the data to ascertain if some principals’ individual characteristics and school context factors are statistically correlated with the probability of having certain leadership attitudes. Finally, we provide evidence that schools with ‘leaders who teach’ report lower academic test scores; this third step is novel as few previous studies have attempted to link leadership styles and test scores. However, the difference in test scores across groups disappears when the geographical factor is accounted for, pointing to the importance of contextual factors in that they affect both leadership types and educational outcomes.