Distributed Leadership, Contextual Factor and Teachers’ Self-Efficacy in Malaysia

Abstract

The study investigates the relationship of distributed leadership with teachers’ self-efficacy and the role of contextual factor as mediator in Residential Schools (RS) and National Secondary School (NSS) in Malaysia. The total of 831 teachers representing 17 schools have participated in the study. The findings show a high positive correlation and significant relationship (r=.50) between distributed leadership with teachers' self-efficacy. The finding shows there is a large and significant difference of distributed leadership between RS and NSS. Further analysis shows the direct effect of distributed leadership to teachers’ self-efficacy is significant (β =.51). However, the direct effect was significantly reduced to β = .28 which indicates the role of contextual factor as partial mediator. The Structural Equation Modeling analysis of the research model shows the coefficient of determination value or R² is .36. The statistic indicates that distributed leadership variable and contextual factor explained 36% of the variance of teacher self-efficacy. The remaining 64% may occur due to other influences that are not within the range of this study. The findings suggest some theoretical implications and recommendations on the role and effect of distributed leadership on teachers’ self-efficacy in Malaysian secondary school.