Role of Teacher Leadership in Improving Students' Problem Solving Skills with the Mediating Role of Creative Thinking

The purpose of this research was to study the role of teacher leadership and students problem solving skills with the mediating role of creative thinking in a causal model framework and through path analysis. Statistical population of the research included all high school teachers and students in Yasuj City, in academic year 2017- 2018, and a sample of 252 teachers and 370 students by using simple random sampling were selected. To collect data, researcher has used three questionnaires: one teacher leadership by Hoveida et al (2017), and problem solving skills by Heppner and Petersen (1982), and the creative thinking by Abedi (1984). The validity of questionnaires was confirmed and reliability of teacher leadership 0.89, problem solving skills questionnaire 0.78 and creative thinking questionnaire 0.80 were obtained. Collected data were analyzed using software SPSS 23 and Amos23. Findings showed that the teacher leadership has a positive and significant relation to problem solving skills and creative thinking, and were capable of directly explainin 25 and 48 percent of the variance of problem solving skills and Creative thinking. Also findings showed that the creative thinking has a positive and significant relation to problem solving skills, and is capable of directly explaining 18 percent of the variance of problem solving skills. Moreover, finding showed that teacher leadership by considering the mediating role of creative thinking indirectly explain 9 percent of variance problem solving skills.