An Empirical Comparative Examination of the Relationships Among School Leadership Behaviors and Teacher Commitment to Students in Malawi

December 3, 2025

An Empirical Comparative Examination of the Relationships Among School Leadership Behaviors and Teacher Commitment to Students in Malawi

Teddie Edward Malangwasira | 2016

Abstract

This cross-sectional quantitative research examined the extent to which a model relating leadership behaviors and teacher commitment previously investigated in the United States of America by Freeman (2014) applies in Malawi, a culture differing from the USA on several dimensions. Freeman found that transactional leadership behavior of school principals in the USA has a positive and significant relationship with teacher commitment to students. In addition, he found that collective efficacy fully mediated the relationship between transactional leadership behavior of school principals and teacher commitment to students’ academic achievement and social well-being. No previous study had examined the external validity of these findings. Utilizing a sample of 184 teachers from public primary and secondary schools in Malawi, Freeman demonstrated results that did not support these findings. In fact, this research found the following: (a) intellectual stimulation behavior of school principals, a dimension of transformational leadership behavior, was positively and significantly related to teacher commitment to both students’ academic achievement and students’ social well-being; (b) transactional leadership did not have any effects on teacher commitment to students, and (c) no mediating effects were present for either organizational trust or collective efficacy in Malawi. Implications of the study findings, research methodologies, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

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