Instructional leadership and student achievement across UAE schools: Mediating role of professional development and cognitive activation in teaching

Abstract

While instructional school leadership remains a focus of scholarly inquiry due to persuasive evidence regarding its contribution to school improvement, most of the existing literature on the influence of leadership on school improvement and student learning has been based predominantly on a more developed Western context. To establish a comprehensive international knowledge repository on instructional leadership across diverse social and cultural contexts, the present study aims to explore the influence of instructional leadership on teachers’ professional learning and instructional practices as well as student achievement as measured by standardized testing in the United Arab Emirates. We conducted multilevel structural equation modeling using the Program for International Student Assessment 2022 dataset that includes 8715 teachers and 21,176 students from 724 schools. We found that instructional leadership is indirectly related to student math achievement, mediated by two dominant types of teacher professional development (traditional and reform-based) that influence teachers’ teaching strategies to activate students cognitively. This paper adds to the growing international literature on international educational leadership by investigating a previously underexplored context within the Gulf region. It suggests that instructional leadership could be a pivotal practice in fostering both reform-based and traditional teacher professional development activities, student-centered teaching and math achievement.