Principal’s instructional leadership practices and organizational commitment amongst teachers at secondary religious schools in the district of Sabak Bernam, Selangor, Malaysia / Nurhanis Mat Shom

The responsibility of the principal as an instructional leader has been heavily debated in the educational system since the implementation of the Malaysia Education Blueprint (2013-2025).This debate is further extended to Malaysian principal in secondary religious schools as instructional leaders on various factors influencing school outcomes. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to explore the statistical relationship between principal’s instructional leadership practices and organizational commitment amongst teachers at secondary religious schools in the district of Sabak Bernam, Selangor. Malaysia. This study is guided by four research objectives and four research questions. A descriptive correlational research design employing the mixed- methods research design was used to explore the relationship. The population of the study consisted of teachers at secondary religious schools in the district of Sabak Bernam, Selangor, Malaysia. 93 teachers were randomly selected and became the respondents of the current study. Two instruments known as the Principal’s Instructional Management Raters Version (Teachers) developed by Hallinger and Murphy (1985) and the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire by Meyer and Allen (1997) were used to measure and collect the quantitative data. Few statistical tests including mean scores, standard deviation, Cronbach’s Alpha, Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient, and simple regression were employed in the study. Besides, qualitative data in a form of open-ended questions were constructed and collected to further triangulate the quantitative data. A 6-point Likert scale of principal’s instructional leadership practices and organizational commitment were used to rate the items in the questionnaire. Findings indicated that firstly, the teachers rated their principal’s instructional leadership practices as having high level of mean score ranging from 4.32 to 4.78 for all the dimensions where defining school goals was rated as the highest (M=4.78, SD=.609). Secondly, the teachers also rated themselves as having high level of organizational commitment ranging from 4.61 to 4.83 for all the dimensions. Thirdly, the results from the correlation coefficient analysis indicated that there was a significant, positive and strong relationship (r=.525, p=.000) between principal’s instructional leadership practices and organizational commitment. Lastly, the simple analysis revealed 27.6% (R2 =.276) of the variance in organizational commitment was contributed by the principal’s instructional leadership practices. Furthermore, the qualitative findings tend to triangulate and support the quantitative findings. Consequently, all these findings lead to some implications such as the extension of corpus of knowledge, policy and training, and theoretical implications on the context of principal’s instructional leadership practices and organizational commitment.