Identifying Behaviors and Dimensions of Teaching-Learning Leadership of Elementary School Principals: A Qualitative Research

A general consensus has been created on the need for the presence of effective school leaders who have can improve the quality of teaching-learning. Instructional leadership is a comprehensive activity that provides learning opportunities for teacher professional development and student academic achievement. Focus on how teachers can improve the teaching-learning process distinguishes instructional leadership from other leadership models in organizations. Instructional leaders focus on school goals, curriculum, and the school environment. This study was qualitative of descriptive-exploratory type. Thematic analysis and themes network was used to identify the behaviors and dimensions of instructional leadership. In order to collect and identify themes, theoretical foundations and opinions of experts in this field were extracted and coded by analyzing the sources published texts during 1990-2018 which were indexed in databases. Due to a large number of sources, a number of them were selected based on sample criteria. Qualitative research MAXqda software was used for thematic analysis. Findings indicated that instructional leadership has eight dimensions, 25 components, and 177 behaviors whose dimensions include defining the school’s vision, school-based supervision, action research, the teacher professional development, preparation, monitoring of the teaching-learning process, distributive leadership, and curriculum management.