Investigating School Leaders’, Teachers’ and Education Officials’ Perceptions of the Effectiveness of an Educational Leadership Program in Bahrain: a Multilevel Conceptual Framework Approach

Abstract

This paper examines the perceptions of school leaders, teachers and education officials of the effectiveness of an Education Leadership Program (ELP) offered at the Bahrain Teachers College )BTC( to school assistant principals and principals, using a multilevel conceptual framework and a 360-degree feedback approach. The multilevel conceptual framework consisted of 4-levels, namely: self-learning, changing others, embedding changes in school practices, and sustainability of change and scaling up the school performance. The study sample consisted of 141 program graduates from 9- cohorts (2009 – 2017), 419 school teachers and 17 MoE officials. The study findings revealed generally that all the three sample groups perceived the program to positively affect its graduates’ performance in the four impact levels. The program graduates’ ability to “change others” was ranked the first impact level as compared to the other levels, from school teachers and MoE officials’ perspectives. However, the program graduates perceived their abilities to “sustain the changes and scale-up their school performance and students’ achievements” as the first of the program impact levels. These findings suggest that the ELP program improved the ability of the program graduates to implement developments and change in their schools and hence meet the requirements set by the Bahrain Education and Training Quality Authority )BQA(. Recommendations of the study include tuning the current ELP program to further meet the needs of public schools’ leaders in the Kingdom of Bahrain, especially those leading Boys intermediate schools.