Instructional Leadership Practices at High-Performing Vocational Schools: Administrators’ vs Teachers’ Perception

Abstract

Instructional leadership continues to be a prevalent subject in educational leadership and has been progressively implemented to solidify educational leadership practices globally. The duty of school leaders as instructional leaders has long been recognized as an essential factor in school organizations to improve the quality of learning in schools. This study aimed to explore and report the instructional leadership practices among school administrators (principals, and vice-principals, head of programs) from high-performing vocational schools based on administrators’ and teachers’ perspectives. A survey was used to acquire the quantitative data. The Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS) was employed and administered to 155 school administrators and 336 teachers from twenty-three high-performing vocational schools. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to measure the level of instructional leadership practices. The t-test was utilized to assess the substantial differences between school administrators and teachers. The findings indicated that the school administrators’ instructional leadership practices are high in defining school goals, managing instructional Programme, and promoting positive school climate dimensions. The findings also show a substantial difference in scores between the perceptions of school administrators and teachers concerning instructional leadership practices by school administrators. This study contributes to the understanding of instructional leadership practices, which had previously received limited attention.