The Relationship between Servant Leadership Characteristics of School Teachers and Students’ Academic Achievement

Harun Gultekin; Margaret Dougherty

doi:10.29333/ejecs/698

Authors

Harun Gultekin Alvernia University
Margaret Dougherty Alvernia University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejecs/698

Keywords:

academic achievement, non-experimental design, servant leadership.

Abstract

This study is a quantitative non-experimental design to explore the relationships between servant leadership characteristics of teachers and academic achievement of students in selected public schools. The purpose of this research was to explore the relationships between servant leadership characteristics of school teachers and students’ academic achievement in selected public schools. The hypothesis for this study was that, in the selected schools, the servant leadership of school teachers positively affects students’ academic achievement. The data collected in fifteen public schools located in Houston, Texas. As an instrument, the Organizational Leadership Assessment (OLA) was used in this study (Laub, 1999). This instrument has 66 questions with Likert-scale responses ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, and data was collected from 362 participants. The servant leadership data was gathered through the OLA survey and interpreted as distinguishable factors that contribute to the larger picture: servant leadership. As our hypothesis, servant leadership behavior and student achievement are expected to have correlation. To understand the relationship between student achievement and servant leadership, univariate and multivariate analysis were used. The data was screened for normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity. Data analysis was conducted by using SPSS Statistics version 22.0, as the tools for the analysis of this research. As a result of the OLA survey regarding the functions of servant leadership, the values people subscale became statistically significant. It is the only subscale that showed any extensive correlation with academic achievement. The scale may indicate how much a teacher values people.

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