Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2025
Instructional leadership malfunction in rural areas: Examining the influence of principal instructional leadership on instructional quality in Chinese rural schools
Leading school improvement in rural settings is a formidable task. Although vast literature has demonstrated that principal instructional leadership is an effective, if not the best, prescription for promoting school outcomes, relevant evidence from the rural context is still limited. This study investigated the effects of principal instructional leadership on teachers’ instructional quality in rural schools and examined the mediating role of teacher motivation. Data were collected from 298 teachers in 13 rural secondary schools in Beijing, China. Structural equation modelling and bootstrapping yield somewhat unexpected findings. Promoting teacher learning had a dominant influence on teachers’ instructional quality, and managing instruction had a significant but rather weak impact, whereas the effects of defining school goals and building an instructional management team were not significant. The influences of promoting teacher learning and managing instruction were totally mediated by teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction, respectively. This work contributes to our understanding of the context-dependent nature of principal instructional leadership and the emotional path in the mechanism by which principals’ impacts on teaching occur, which provides implications and guidance for advancing rural principal instructional leadership practice.
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