Dual Effects of Transformational Leadership on Teacher Efficacy in Close and Distant Leadership Situations

Although research generally attests to the beneficial role of transformational leadership (TL) for school effectiveness, little empirical work has distinguished individual- from group-focused dimensions of TL and analysed their relationships with target variables at the individual and group level of followers simultaneously. Using a dual effects model of TL, the present study aims to fill this gap. It examines the dimensional structure of principals' TL behaviours and their prognostic value for teachers' self- and group-referential efficacy beliefs. Additionally, contextual dependencies of leadership effects are considered through the moderating role of a principal's span of control. Based on questionnaire data of 1,702 teachers in 118 Swiss schools, doubly latent ML-SEMs specify moderated dual effects of TL on both teacher and school levels of analysis. Results convey empirically separable latent sub-dimensions of TL (individual-/group-focused), which (a) characterise systematic differences in the leadership behaviours of the investigated principals and (b) substantially predict variations in the mean-levels of both teacher and collective efficacy between their respective schools. TL-collective efficacy relations are stronger in close leadership situations (low span of control) than in distant ones.