WHAT IS THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP ON STAFF MORALE, JOB SATISFACTION, AND MOTIVATION?

In a time where retaining qualified teachers is crucial, one cannot ignore the importance of teacher job satisfaction, morale, and motivation in shaping teachers’ intentions to remain in the profession. This is where educational leadership comes into play. This paper looks at the nature and extent of the impact of educational leadership on three important aspects of the job, namely staff morale, job satisfaction, and motivation. The latter constructs are each redefined and reconceptualized as the lack of consensus and the ambiguity in their respective meanings can greatly affect how they are applied as well as their results. When applied to the teaching context, Herzberg’s motivation hygiene theory was found to be unapplicable in relation to theory transferability and the separate categorization of job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The latter are greatly affected by not only leadership style per se, but more precisely by the teacher’s perception of a certain leadership style. This individuality dimension also affects the ideological compatibility between teachers and work contexts, having a direct impact on job satisfaction. Nonetheless, although educational leadership has proven not to be the sole factor in teacher job satisfaction, morale and motivation, leaders must possess the right knowledge and understanding about the needs, expectations, attitudinal responses, and characteristics of their staff as individual members of a group in order to be able to positively affect their perceptions.