Exploring and Developing Items Measuring Teachers’ Followership Modalities : An Exploratory Factor Analysis Procedure

The concept of followership has received considerable attention over the past three decades. Good followers play crucial role in determining the success of an organization. However, past followership literature has revealed that there is limited understanding of the dimensions that made up followership modalities, especially in the school context. The purpose of the study was therefore to contribute to the existing literature by performing a thorough validation of the dimensions of Teachers' Followership Modalities through the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) procedure. This study used a cross-sectional survey approach to develop precise measurements for the Teachers’ Followership Modalities construct. A structured questionnaire in Google Form format was used to collect data. The study included 108 randomly selected public secondary school teachers from three districts in Sarawak, namely Kuching, Padawan, and Samarahan. The study revealed that all 20 items adapted and modified from Kelley's (1992) Followership Questionnaire met the EFA procedure's factor loading cut-off point of .60 using IBM-SPSS software version 25.0. Therefore, all 20 items were kept and deemed appropriate for measuring the Teachers' Followership Modalities construct. However, the EFA procedure disclosed 5 components as compared to Kelley’s two-dimensional model. The findings of this study offered a validated and reliable questionnaire to measure Teachers' Followership Modalities among public secondary school teachers in Malaysia. Thus, the Malaysian Ministry of Education which seeks to gain from teachers with good followership modalities will benefit from this research

Relationship Between Teachers’ Followership Dimensions and Principals’ Leadership Effectiveness in Malaysian Public Secondary Schools

The leadership field has aroused a distinctive interest due to its human influence in organizations. Hence, strengthening leadership effectiveness has emerged as a core concern in all organizations, including schools. However, numerous reports have demonstrated that poor efforts to strengthen leadership effectiveness in schools resulted in a loss of money and resources, as well as a failure to improve student performance in international assessments. Failures in organizations were probably triggered by an overemphasis on leaders and a disregard for other organizational elements such as followers. In reality, leadership and followership complemented each other in the pragmatic success of an organization. Unfortunately, there are relatively few studies have explored the potential effects of followership on leadership effectiveness, particularly in schools. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between Teachers’ Followership Dimensions and Principals’ Leadership Effectiveness in Malaysian public secondary schools with a follower-centric approach. The survey approach was employed in this quantitative study, with data collected using Google Form. Respondents were chosen via proportionate stratified random sampling from 43 public secondary schools in Sarawak. A total of 418 valid questionnaires were analysed with IBM-SPSS version 25.0 and IBM-SPSS-AMOS version 24.0 statistical software. Both Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis were conducted to explore and confirm the underlying components for this study. Subsequently, a full-fledged Structural Equation Modeling was performed to answer all the research questions, test hypotheses, and assess the model fit of the data obtained. The findings revealed that teachers rate themselves as having high levels of followership dimensions such as Assume Responsibility, Serve, Take Moral Action and Participate in Transformation, but only moderate levels of Challenge. They also perceived their principals practised at a high level on all three components of Principals’ Leadership Effectiveness, namely Setting Directions, Developing People and Leader Dispositions. The findings also indicated that Teachers’ Followership Dimensions construct has statistically significant effect on the Principals’ Leadership Effectiveness. Using the path analysis, the Assume Responsibility_ Serve, Take Moral Action and Challenge components were identified as significant predictors of Principals’ Leadership Effectiveness, except for Participate in Transformation. According to the structural model, components of Teachers’ Followership Dimensions construct explained 35% of the total variance in measuring Principals’ Leadership Effectiveness. The study proved that the proposed TFD_PLE model fits the data collected from Malaysian public secondary schools. The findings may serve as a credible reference for both academics and practitioners in guiding them to understand what and how followership dimensions might accelerate the effectiveness of leadership development endeavours. This study makes a significant contribution by attempting to explore a new epoch in the field of educational leadership and management, which may be termed as educational followership. Keywords: Principals’ Leadership Effectiveness, Teachers’ Followership Dimensions, structural equation modelling, Malaysian public secondary school

“Followership” - The Missing Puzzle in Educational Leadership Research

Over the past three decades, many scholars have begun to view followers as assets in understanding leadership. However, limited studies have explored the potential impact of followership on educational leadership, particularly in school settings. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to review the teachers’ followership styles in literature from 1997 to 2018 in school settings with reference to the Kelley Followership Model. The findings have shown that most of the teachers are categorised as exemplary followers. This group of teachers acquired high scores in independent critical thinking skills and are actively engaged in school activities. Exemplary teachers may equip schools to improve and sustain their performance. Good followership can be strengthened by dyadic relationships between leaders and followers. This relationship is imperative as it shapes the development of pragmatic strategies that help to promote leadership effectiveness. The results benefit both school leaders and teachers in recognizing the value to cultivate a dignified leader-follower relationship