The influence of principals’ leadership behaviours on work stress of secondary school teachers in

Abstract

This study is conducted to identify the influence of leadership behavior of school principals on working pressure of secondary school teachers of various schools in Melaka from four aspects, namely physical, psychological, behavioral and mind stresses. In addition, it explores the impact of the principal’s practice of compassion as the mediator of the relationship between leadership behaviour of principals and work stress of teachers. A questionnaire consisting of ten questions were administered randomly (cluster of clusters) to 361 teachers randomly selected from 28 secondary schools (that has the total population of 5993 teachers). For pilot study, a total of 78 teachers from six secondary schools involved. The Teacher Stress Inventory (Boyle et al., 1995) was used as the instrument to measure the level of work stress, items leadership behavior and practice of compassion. Using SPSS and AMOS, data was analyzed descriptively (mean, frequency and percentage) and inferentially. Results showed that the level of phisical stress is a major contributor to the work stress of the teachers, and is at the medium level (mean = 2.48), while the psychological aspects (mean = 2.11), aspects of the mind (mean = 1.74) and behavioral (min = 1.19) remained at a low level. Even though there are significant differences in work stress, there is no significant effect on the demographic characteristics of teachers. SEM analysis results showed that the practice of compassion is the significant mediator that neutralizing the relationship between principal behaviour and teachers work stress.