The Mediating and moderating effect of school climate and teachers' desire to participate in school decision making

Abstract

The participation of teachers in school decision-making is a topic that has been studied for several decades. This topic has been approached from different perspectives, analyzing teachers, students, the community, and the school. The purpose of this study

was to build a predictive model to evaluate the participation of teachers in decision- making, adding school climate as a mediating variable and teachers’ desire to participate

in decision-making as a moderating variable to the model proposed by Smylie (1992a). This study sought to address the evidence gap to propose a predictive model to investigate the effect of principal-teacher relationship, teachers’ sense of responsibility and accountability, school climate, desire to participate in decision-making on teacher participation in school decision-making.

The study followed a quantitative approach, adopting a positivist perspective, using a cross-sectional design and survey as a strategy to collect data to test five hypotheses. Data for this study was collected from 351 respondents in Chile using a questionnaire with a 5-point Likert Scale. Stratified and systematic random procedures were used to select respondents from educational institutions. The data was analyzed by using SPSS and AMOS statistical packages. The results showed that school climate directly and positively influences teachers’ participation in school decision-making. Principal-teacher relationship and teachers’ sense of responsibility and accountability directly and positively influence the school climate and indirectly influence teachers’ participation in school decision-making through the school climate. Therefore, the school climate acts as a mediating variable within the model. In addition, the predictive model shows that teachers’ desire to participate in school decision-making directly and positively influences teachers’ participation in school decision-making. Therefore, this variable does not act as a moderator variable within the model. The emerging model explains 39% of the variance observed in teacher participation in school decision-making. From the results, it is evident that teachers desire to participate in educational decision-making and management decision-making. Future studies may consider adding other factors that may influence teachers’ participation in decision-making, such as the principal’s leadership style and the principals’ and teachers’ decision-making style. Also, researchers may consider a qualitative study to obtain other factors that could influence teachers’ participation in school decision-making.