Assessing the State of Servant Leadership, Teacher Morale, and Student Academic Performance Outcomes in a Florida Elementary School District Submitted

Аннотация

This descriptive research study was conducted to determine the state of perceived teacher morale and student academic performance as measured by fourth-grade reading and math scores among four elementary schools defined by the servant leadership score of each principal in this Florida elementary school district. While related research from other geographical areas was identified and published, the aim of this study was to describe the current state of these variables in the southeastern United States. Four elementary principals and 153 elementary teachers participated in this study. The Revised Servant Leadership Profile 360 survey (RSLP 360) was used to obtain the principals’ perceptions of servant leadership based on the criteria from the survey to categorize the four schools as servant or non-servant leadership-led schools, and the Purdue Teacher Opinionaire survey (PTO) was used to collect the teachers’ perceptions of morale. Fourth-grade Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) scores in mathematics and reading were retrieved from the Florida Department of Education database and used as the third variable in this study. The intent of this research was not to define relationships between servant leadership, teacher morale, and student test scores, but to describe the extent to which these variables existed based on the perceptions of the survey participants and state test scores for this school district in Florida. The results from this study may be used for future research and practices to further examine the active and potential status of servant leadership, teacher morale, and student academic performance outcomes in PreK-12 education.