The Relationship Between Adolescents' Perceived School Climate and Different Leadership Styles

Abstract

School climate is the important element of students' educational, social, and psychological development. It does not only consist of the teaching-learning process but also covers the overall development of the adolescents. The school principals’ leadership styles shape a school climate. The current study investigates the student’s perception of the psychological dimensions of school climate and its association with different leadership styles such as transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire in Pakistan. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was employed in this study. A multistage sampling technique was used to select the sample. The school climate questionnaire SCQ and multifactor leadership questionnaire MLQ were used in this regard. Descriptive statistics and inferential analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between different psychological dimensions of school climate and the leadership styles. The findings revealed that students' responses were fairly consistent, suggesting a high degree of agreement among students about their psychological school climate experiences. The results also revealed that the laissez-faire leadership demonstrates a weak positive relationship with student deviant behavior, a substantial negative relationship with student well-being, and a strong positive relationship with subjective unsafety, while both the transformational and transactional leadership styles demonstrate no statistically significant relationship with student deviant behavior, a significant positive relationship with student well-being, and exhibit a significant negative relationship with subjective unsafety, respectively. The study highlights the importance of effective school leadership in promoting psychological dimensions of school climate among adolescents.