A structured review of the potential role of school leaders in making teaching more attractive

Some attempts to address the worldwide shortage of teachers focus on raising the prestige of teaching, and making the occupation more appealing. Teacher job satisfaction and well-being have been identified as important factors linked to the status of teachers, with school leadership reportedly playing a key role. This paper is part of a larger review of 96 studies about teacher retention. Here we present the findings from 28 studies on effective leadership practices and attributes relevant to teacher well-being. These studies were identified via a systematic search of five large databases and other sources, and their results synthesised in terms of the strength of the evidence. There is some consensus that “effective” leaders share a combination of attributes - supportive, empowering and creating a positive teaching and learning environment. However, research in this field is replete with methodological flaws, almost all is correctional at best, making it difficult to make any causal claims. There is no clear and consistent definition of “effective” leadership. “Effective” school leaders are believed to exhibit a combination of various characteristics. What these characteristics are is difficult to define as the same label can be given to different constructs and different labels for similar constructs. The outcome measures (well-being and job satisfaction) are also rather nebulous, with multiple components. Most of these measures are based on respondents’ subjective assessment. In conclusion, it is far from clear how to make leaders more effective in promoting teacher well-being, and even what effective leaders look like.