Whitney, Cody K.
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to determine the strength of relationships betweenprincipals’ perceptions of their implementation of Marzano, Waters, and McNulty’s(2005) 21 instructional leadership behaviors and student achievement on the KansasEnglish language arts (ELA) and mathematics assessments. The participants in this studywere Kansas public and private high school principals. An online survey was sent to 380principals, yielding 27 viable responses. As a result of the small sample size appearing tohave affected the results, a Kendall’s Tau non-parametric index was used to follow up thehypothesis testing involving Pearson product moment correlation coefficients. Thefindings of this study provided evidence for positive, statistically significant relationshipsbetween the instructional leadership behaviors of communication and discipline andstudent achievement on the Kansas mathematics assessment. Additionally, the results ofthis study indicated positive, statistically significant relationships between the behaviorsof communication, discipline, outreach, and relationship and student achievement on theKansas ELA assessment. The data obtained from this study could be used by buildingprincipals to improve student achievement through engaging in self-reflection andparticipating in professional development focused on these instructional behaviors thatMarzano et al. (2005) claimed could enhance student achievement. Additional researchcould be conducted during a time when principals are not in the middle of a globalpandemic. Research could also be completed to determine if there is a relationshipbetween elementary and middle school principals’ self-perception of implementedinstructional leadership behaviors and student achievement within the state of Kansas.Further research could also be conducted using a survey based on the instructional leadership behaviors revised and relabeled by Roleau (2021) as leadershipresponsibilities.