Relationship of Leadership Practices and Teacher Empowerment as Perceived by Teachers in Urban Georgia

The primary purpose of this correlational, quantitative research study was to examine the relationship between teacher perceptions of administrator leadership practices and levels of teacher empowerment. A secondary purpose of the study was to investigate if, or how, a teacher's gender and level of education could predict their perceived level of empowerment. The sample included 47 teachers of all school levels in a southeastern urban school district in Georgia. Leadership practices were studied using the Power Perception Profile, while teacher empowerment was measured with the School Participant Empowerment Scale. Pearson product moment correlations assessed a potential relationship between leadership practices and teachers' perceived level of empowerment. The results of the correlations did not yield any statistically significant findings;probabilities for all correlation coefficients were p ≥ 006. For the MANOVA, the results of the interaction effect of gender and education were not significant, F(12, 62) = 0.83, p = .618, partial eta2 = .14, indicating that there were not simultaneous mean differences on the subscales of the SPES by the interaction of gender and level of education. Therefore, the null hypothesis of no statistically significant differences in perceived level of empowerment, by teacher's gender and level of education, could not be rejected. This study did not support the relationship between teacher perception of leadership practices and teacher empowerment. Teacher perceptions of leadership practices and empowerment did not differ by demographic variables of age and level of education. The major limitation of this study was the small sample size. A discussion of this study's results in relation to current research is warranted.