The Mediating Role of Motivation to Lead in the Relationship Between Teachers’ Leadership Self-Efficacy and Their Desire to Become a School Principal

Abstract

It is substantial to reveal how candidates for school leadership emerge and which factors have impacts of direct and indirect sort on the said process. This study investigated the relationship between leadership self-efficacy and desire to become a school principal and the mediating effect of motivation-to-lead in this relationship. Individual and environmental variables were also included in the study as control variables. In the study, the cross-sectional prediction design was utilized. Structural equation modeling was used in the analysis of data collected from 386 high school teachers working in Ankara, Türkiye. The findings exhibited that gender and administrative experience had a significant effect on the desire to become a principal. The restrictive institutional environment had no significant effect on the desire to become a principal; howbeit, role ambiguity had a negative effect, whereas leadership prototypes had a positive effect. According to the main finding of the study, leadership self-efficacy affected the desire to become a principal through motivation-to-lead. Based on the findings of the study, applying positive discrimination to female teachers to encourage them on school principalship, integrating the activities in the job descriptions of school principals in the in-service training programs of teachers, developing mechanisms enabling teachers to participate in administrative tasks, granting school principals a separate legal status independent from those of teachers, making holding a graduate degree in educational sciences among the basic criteria for the selection of school principals, and designing the content of the educational administration certificate programs in a way to cover predominantly leadership issues were recommended.