Agasisti, T., Bowers, A. J., & Soncin, M. (2018)

Article
Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
School principals’ leadership 1–27
ª The Author(s) 2018
types and student achievement Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/1741143218768577
in the Italian context: Empirical journals.sagepub.com/home/ema
results from a three-step latent

class analysis
Tommaso Agasisti, Alex J. Bowers and Mara Soncin
Abstract
This study investigates the existence of various leadership types in a sample of lower secondary
school principals across Italy (n ¼ 1073). Information is obtained using a questionnaire about
instructional practices and leadership perceptions administered by the National Evaluation Com-
mittee for Education (INVALSI). Employing a latent class analysis (LCA) for the specification of the
educational production function (EPF), we identify three subgroups of school leaders: educative
leaders (49% of the total sample), who support school improvement that utilises teachers’ skills;
leaders who teach (35%), who are actively present in the classroom; and transactional leaders (16%),
who support the school and balance various viewpoints. We then analyse the data to ascertain if
some principals’ individual characteristics and school context factors are statistically correlated with
the probability of having certain leadership attitudes. Finally, we provide evidence that schools with
‘leaders who teach’ report lower academic test scores; this third step is novel as few previous studies
have attempted to link leadership styles and test scores. However, the difference in test scores
across groups disappears when the geographical factor is accounted for, pointing to the importance
of contextual factors in that they affect both leadership types and educational outcomes.
Keywords
Leadership practices, managerial practices, latent class analysis, determinants of student
achievement
Introduction
Research evidence has demonstrated the importance of school leadership in influencing students’
success in both cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes (Marzano et al., 2005; Robinson et al., 2008;
Waters et al., 2003). Among school factors, leadership is second only to classroom conditions in
Corresponding author:
Mara Soncin, Politecnico di Milano School of Management, Via Raffaele Lambruschini 4/b, Milano 20133, Italy.
Email: mara.soncin@polimi.it
2 Educational Management Administration & Leadership XX(X)
Table 1. General description of the main leadership styles emerging from the literature.
Leadership style Core focus Description
Instructional Instruction Leadership approach that focuses on teaching and learning effectiveness;
leadership the attention is primarily on teachers as mediators in improving
students’ results
Transformational Organisation Leadership approach affecting motivation, engagement and commitment
leadership with regard to school issues
Transactional Management Leadership approach that concentrates on functions and tasks within the
leadership organisation
Distributed Organisation Participative leadership approach based on the distribution of important
leadership tasks and decision making across the organisation (i.e. leadership
shared with teachers)
influencing achievement (Day et al., 2009; Leithwood et al., 2004; Leithwood et al., 2008).
Moreover, as Leithwood et al. (2004: 5) state: ‘Leadership effects are usually largest where and
when they are needed most’, meaning in more difficult schools, so that effective leadership is also a
strong instrument for increasing equity across institutions (Edmonds, 1979). The importance of
focusing on principals as school leaders is related to their ability to increase school effectiveness
and students’ outcomes through their instructional and non-instructional practices (Bowers and
White, 2014; Bowers et al., 2017; Boyce and Bowers, 2018b; Day et al., 2016; Leithwood and
Jantzi, 2008; Shatzer et al., 2014; Urick and Bowers, 2011, 2014b). From this perspective, school
leadership can be considered a key input in the educational production process and especially as an
important factor among school resources. In looking for the existence of different leadership styles,
literature has moved from discussing the predominant role of instructional leadership (Smith and
Andrews, 1989) to providing a more comprehensive vision of school leadership, with a growing
emphasis on transformational, transactional and distributed leadership (Bowers et al., 2017; Bush
and Glover, 2003; Day et al., 2016; Marks and Printy, 2003; Neumerski, 2013; Printy et al., 2009;
Urick and Bowers, 2014a). Table 1 provides a brief description of the main leadership styles.
Recent literature has moved towards the identification of leadership types, where the composite
application of leadership styles is investigated (Gu et al., 2016; Marks and Printy, 2003; Printy
et al., 2009; Urick and Bowers, 2014b). Indeed, a multidimensional approach can help to describe
school principals’ approach to leadership, which reflects multiple simultaneous dimensions of
specific leadership styles.
Given the fact that the relationship between leadership practices and student achievement/
engagement can be both direct, or mediated by the role of teachers in the classroom or by school
contextual conditions, the search for the most suitable model to measure this association has yet to
be concluded (Grissom et al., 2015; Hallinger and Heck, 2011; Hendriks and Scheerens, 2013;
Witziers et al., 2003). School leaders are characterised by different approaches when conducting
managerial activities. So, part of the literature is devoted to exploring what proportion of various
managerial actions are actually adopted in the day-to-day life of school principals (Bloom et al.,
2015; Di Liberto et al., 2015). In this sense, leadership can be defined as the set of values and
purposes that drive principals’ activities, whereas management can be interpreted as the opera-
tional decisions that are put in place accordingly (Dimmock, 1999). Hence, the first is intrinsically
related to a future plan, the second is instead connected to its present operational translation. In
order to maximize school effectiveness, both dimensions should coexist in the role and be
Agasisti et al.: School principals’ leadership types and student achievement in the Italian context 3
effectively exerted by the principal (Bush and Glover, 2003). Moreover, leadership practices may
be influenced by a set of contextual conditions and principals’ individual characteristics (i.e.
mediator factors (Leithwood and Levin, 2005)). The current study addresses these issues, aiming
to identify the existence of different leadership types in a sample of Italian school principals and
establish how the different types relate to student achievement by means of the specification of an
educational production function (EPF), where leadership and managerial practices are modelled
and used as an input for explaining the effects on students’ test scores (the schools’ outcomes).
These objectives are then pursued through applying a three-step latent class analysis (LCA), a
statistical model that both allows for the identification of subgroups of individuals within data and
for relating this finding to a measured distal outcome (e.g. Boyce and Bowers, 2016). More
specifically, the research questions addressed are:
1. To what extent is there one or more than one subgroup (latent class(es)) of leadership types
(subgroups) as found from a national-level survey of principals in Italy?
2. What are the main factors associated with the probability that a principal belongs to a
specific subgroup of responders?
3. To what extent is there a typology of school leadership behaviours related to student
achievement in standardised tests in Italy?
Data refer to the 2014–2015 school year and to a sample of 1073 school principals across Italy,
selected by the National Evaluation Committee for Education (INVALSI) as being nationally
representative. The questionnaires completed by school principals report their perceptions on a
number of instructional leadership practices and operational activities in the school. Student
achievement is measured through standardised test scores in reading and mathematics at Grade
6 and Grade 8, the first and last years of lower secondary school, respectively, in the Italian
education system, with the aim of obtaining a measure of ‘value added’ by the school. The
assumption that ensures a good fit between the research questions, data and methods in the present
study is that instructional leadership is not perceived by school principals as a monolithic dimen-
sion (Urick and Bowers, 2017), but that leadership practices may differ across schools, resulting in
a number of leadership types (Bowers et al., 2017; Day et al., 2016; Urick and Bowers, 2014b). The
analysis of such a typology of leadership helps academics and practitioners to better understand
how leaders’ perceptions relate to theory on instructional leadership. At the same time, the char-
acterisation of the types can shed light on the heterogeneous managerial practices that are asso-
ciated with the exercise of leadership, and it can also highlight the different activities of the
principals within each leadership subgroup type.
Looking at a preview of the results, we find three different groups of leaders among Italian
school principals: educative leaders (49% of the sample), leaders who teach (35%) and transac-
tional leaders (16%). They differ in terms of individual characteristics (age and gender distribu-
tion), career (types of contract) and school features (school government and location). We also
show that different leadership styles are associated with different levels of student achievement,
although this correlation seems to be partially driven by a geographical distribution of principals
according to certain specific leadership types.
This research is particularly innovative in the Italian context, where studies about leadership
styles and managerial practices at school are still at an early stage (Bloom et al., 2015; Di Liberto
et al., 2015). Moreover, the topic is particularly interesting in the policy context, given the recent
approval of a law that empowers the role of school principals starting from the 2015–2016 school
year (Law 107/2015). Until this reform, the role of the school principal in Italy consisted of being
the ‘instructional leader’ of the institution and managing school resources within the national
guidelines defined by the central government, without any possibility of or control over appoint-
ing/firing teachers or defining teachers’ salaries that were only based on seniority. The new law
reinforces the role of principals especially in terms of human resource management (they have
been granted more autonomy with the possibility of being able to appoint and manage a group of
‘additional’ teachers) and freedom of choice with regard to instructional decisions. So, the debate
concerns the current leadership capabilities of principals and how they will be able to carry out
their new leadership and managerial roles. These issues make the need for evidence about educa-
tional leadership in the Italian context even more urgent, because the hypothesis at the root of the
recent reform is that more effective management in a school will lead to better academic results
(Law 107/2015).
The article is organised as follows: Section 2 contains a review of the existing literature on the
topic; Section 3 provides an overview of the Italian schools policy context; Section 4 explains the
data and methodology; Section 5 describes the results obtained; and, finally, Section 6 discusses
the research and provides a conclusion.
Related literature
In this section, we aim to discuss how the literature on educational leadership and management can
be integrated into empirical analyses and linked to the EPF economics of education research
literature. Indeed, our article aims to contribute to this literature at the intersection between the
conceptual definition of school leadership styles and the empirical analyses (based on statistical
and econometric techniques) by studying the impact of leadership on educational outputs.
In educational leadership, two major lines of research have grown over time, differentiated by
their approach to the topic: the first one is more theoretical in nature and concerns modelling
leadership styles and the pathways of their association with school effectiveness and student
achievement; the second one is more econometric and aims to quantify this association – that
is, align it with an economic framework. With reference to the first line of research, the literature is
moving from the prominent role of instructional leadership to a more shared concept of leadership
throughout the organisation (Boyce and Bowers, 2018b). In one of the earlier definitions, Hallinger
and Murphy (1985) define instructional leadership as the intersection of school climate, instruc-
tional programme management and school mission. Along the same lines, Smith and Andrews
(1989) define four dimensions of the principal as instructional leader: resource provider as head of
the organisation; an instructional resource in day-to-day activities; communicator of school goals
and values; and visible presence through supervising school activities. According to Bush and
Glover (2003: 12) ‘Instructional leadership focuses on teaching and learning and on the behaviour
of teachers in working with students. Leaders’ influence is targeted at student learning via teach-
ers’. By contrast, transformational leadership is a second dimension that has emerged from the
literature. According to Leithwood (1994), transformational leadership deals with establishing a
clear vision and goals, providing staff with intellectual stimulation, support and high expectations,
sharing organisational values and school culture, and fostering active participation in school
decisions. Leithwood and Jantzi (1999: 453) define transformational leadership as the ability of
the school head to ‘foster capacity development and higher levels of personal commitment
of organizational goals’. However, as shown by Robinson et al. (2008) in their meta-analysis of
leadership effects in schools, the practice of instructional leadership leads to stronger effects on
student outcomes than transformational leadership. Recently, the concepts of distributed leader-
ship (Spillane and Sherer, 2004) and shared instructional leadership (Marks and Printy, 2003;
Printy et al., 2009) have grown in importance, with the idea that ‘shared leadership provides
coherence and stability’ and that ‘interaction is the basis for learning and leadership’ (Marks and
Printy, 2003). Indeed, Spillane (2005) stresses the difference between distributed and shared
leadership, defining the first as based on the interactions between leader and followers in a specific
situation. Depending on the situation, this may or may not cause the leader to share leadership with
followers. The evolution of leadership styles and concepts over time underlines the necessity of
conducting empirical studies that describe how principals are actually behaving when exercising
their role within their schools.
In the literature, the interaction between leadership styles has also been investigated, with the
objective of clarifying the complex nature of school principals’ activities. Printy et al. (2009)
extend the study by Marks and Printy (2003) that analysed 22 schools in the US, and claim that
transformational leadership is a necessary but insufficient condition for shared instructional lead-
ership. In this way, the concept of instructional leadership has been evolving over the past three
decades to include instructional leadership, shared instructional leadership and components of
distributed and transformational leadership (Day et al., 2016; Neumerski, 2013; Rigby, 2014).
However, as noted by Boyce and Bowers (2018b), this evolution has come at the cost of what
Neumerski (2013: 311) calls ‘separate and disjointed bodies of literature’. In an attempt to bring
more clarity to this issue and investigate the issue of instructional versus transformational leader-
ship styles, recent research has built on Marks and Printy (2003) to articulate the theory of
principals’ styles versus types (Urick, 2016; Urick and Bowers, 2014b). In this work, principals’
styles adhere to the current concepts of instructional and transformational leadership; however, this
research also postulates that a principal’s leadership style is multidimensional, such that principals
are not either instructional or transformational, but are distributed across these two dimensions of
leadership and cluster in subgroup types along both dimensions. Indeed, following Marks and
Printy (2003), Urick and Bowers (2014b) analysed a large, nationally generalisable sample of over
6000 US school principals using LCA, providing strong evidence that transformational leader-
ship is necessary but insufficient for a high level of instructional leadership. Importantly, for the
present study, Urick and Bowers (2014b) also articulated a typology subgroup theory of school
leadership types, in which principals clustered into three significantly different subgroups across
these two dimensions. They termed these subgroups ‘controlling’, ‘balkanising’ and ‘integrat-
ing’ principals. The controlling principals were the sole exercisers of leadership in the schools,
the balkanising principals distributed the leadership to teacher teams (such as in high schools),
whereas the integrating principals brought these two perspectives together with a high level of
both transformational and instructional leadership, with no subgroup having a low level of
transformational leadership but having a high level of instructional leadership. This replicated
the finding from Marks and Printy (2003), indicating that transformational leadership is neces-
sary but insufficient for shared instructional leadership in the US; integrating principals formed
the majority of the US sample. This finding has recently been extended to the UK context in
which Day et al. (2016: 225) summarised the issue well in their survey of over 2000 educators
and in-depth case studies of 20 schools:
In schools that sustained and/or improved their performance as judged by student academic outcomes
and external inspection results, principals had exercised leadership that was both transformational and
instructional as they progressively shaped the culture and work of their schools in building teachers’
commitment and capacities during different phases of their schools’ development journeys. Through
this integrated approach, changes had been introduced and implemented successfully and standards of
teaching and learning built and sustained.
Nevertheless, leadership takes place within specific contexts, so it cannot be analysed by

disregarding the context in which it happens. Hallinger (2011) interprets leadership itself as a
contextually dependent variable, influenced in turn by contextual and antecedent variables. In this
vein, it is important to study how school principals take decisions about the use of resources, such
as the allocation of time to different tasks, or how they affect other schools’ critical inputs, such as
teachers’ development and physical resources. In particular, school context shapes the boundary
according to which the school principal acts, whereas antecedents, such as principals’ individual
characteristics and set of values, influence the leadership style (Day et al., 2016). For instance, the
average socio-economic status of the school can be considered as both a direct and indirect variable
shaping school effectiveness, given the influence it can have on school outcomes through its effect
on school climate (Hallinger and Heck, 1996). However, recent research (Urick, 2016) has sug-
gested that for US school principals, there is little difference in the amount of attention they devote
to contextual issues regarding their school, but they diverge considerably with regard to their
perceived hierarchy of control in a school, with stronger instructional leaders sharing and distri-
buting leadership among the teachers, advancing the work of Urick and Bowers (2014b) that aimed
to show how the three subgroup leadership types differ across the two dimensions of transforma-
tional and instructional leadership.
Although there is a long history of studies examining both the direct and indirect effects of
leadership on student achievement (Goff and Finch, 2015; Hallinger and Heck, 1996, 2011; Hendriks
and Scheerens, 2013), recent research aimed at measuring the association between leadership and
schools’ effectiveness has resulted in strong findings. In their meta-analysis of 69 studies, Marzano
et al. (2005) show that an increase of one standard deviation in a principal’s effectiveness in
leadership (from the average 50th percentile to the 84th) would raise the average student achieve-
ment by 10 percentile points (from the 50th to the 60th). Recent randomised controlled experiments
implementing the recommended principals’ professional development from the meta-analysis using
what is known as the McREL Balanced Leadership framework have shown a strong causal effect of
an increasing perception of the principals’ own sense of their ability to focus on instructional
improvement and improve teacher norms and culture (Miller et al., 2016) having no impact on
teacher perception of instructional improvement or student achievement growth (Jacob et al.,
2015). Importantly, for the present study, which aims to bring together the research on the effect
principals have on school outcomes and the subgroup typology leadership research, Bowers et al.
(2017) use a multilevel LCA framework to examine different subgroups of school principals’
instructional leadership and leadership for learning styles. The authors find three significantly dif-
ferent types of schools defined by the leadership practices taking place, and postulate that this
subgroup typology framework could be useful for studies such as the McREL one. Bowers et al.
(2017) note that the majority of studies to date have examined school leadership as a single mono-
lithic category, rather than examining the extent to which there may be significantly different
subgroups of principals and schools based on the practices taking place, and that this type of
subgroup analysis could help identify specific leadership types that may have an effect on schooling
outcomes, rather than lumping all principals into a single ‘best fit’ analysis.
Causal experiments are rare in school leadership research, as are typology subgroup studies. In
the non-causal yet longitudinal research, as opposed to cross-sectional research that has been
highly critiqued in the past (Hallinger and Heck, 1996, 2011), studies such as the one undertaken
by Grissom et al. (2015), using data from Miami-Dade County public schools in Florida between
the 2003–2004 and 2010–2011 school years, show how much the estimated effect is dependent on
the model applied, with a variation from 0.18 to 0.05 standard deviation for the same school
principal according to the model. Coelli and Green (2012) apply a dynamic effects model to data
from British Columbia, allowing for the cumulative effect of the principal’s impact that could take
time to be visible. Following this approach, they show that specific principals have a substantial
impact in terms of both English exam marks and graduation rate of students at Grade 12. Using the
same methodological technique, Helal and Coelli (2016) analyse data from public schools in
Victoria (Australia), finding a strong correlation between principals’ effectiveness and student
achievement. Moreover, they investigate the ways in which student achievement is affected,
finding that principals who create a collaborative workplace vision and shared goals are more
able to affect students’ results. In terms of the effect of specific leadership styles, Bogler (2005)
employs a hierarchical regression analysis to analyse quantitative questionnaires from 983 teachers
in Israel, testing the effect of teachers’ empowerment in terms of transformational and shared
leadership. He finds that increasing teachers’ decision making power also raises their commitment,
with organisational benefits. Hallinger and Heck (2010) focus on shared (collaborative) leadership,
analysing 192 primary schools in the US over four years through a multilevel latent change
analysis. Applying a mediated effects model, they find that leadership does have an impact on
student achievement through its effect on the academic capacity of schools. Additionally, Bowers
and White (2014) find strong principals’ effects over time in Illinois, disaggregating school growth
trajectory effects by high and low trajectories between Chicago and the rest of the state and finding
strong effects of principals’ experience and training on school growth trajectories. Overall, Leith-
wood et al. (2008) summarise findings on the relationship between school leadership and student
achievement, stating that the impact of leadership is second only to the effect teachers have on
influencing students’ results. This conclusion is derived from both qualitative and quantitative
studies on the topic, and is consistent across leadership styles and leadership practices. In their
discussion, they mention the study by Creemers and Reezigt (1996), in which school leadership is
reported to explain, among other school factors, about a quarter of the difference in student
achievement across schools. Recent studies confirm both this positive relationship and the funda-
mental role of classroom practices in this respect (Sebastian and Allensworth, 2012). The study of
managerial practices and leadership styles is, then, not only important for a better understanding of
the mechanisms behind the administration of schools, but also as a fundamental ingredient for
producing positive educational outcomes.
Considering the econometric line of research, Bloom et al. (2015) focus on the managerial role
of school principals and on the relationship between managerial practices and students’ output.
Within the frame of the World Management Survey, they collected data on the managerial
approach of 1800 high schools across eight countries. They adopted an EPA at the school level,
controlling for the student demographic, and school characteristics and government, in addition to
the managerial variable. Results show a positive correlation between the management dimension
and student performance in all the countries analysed. In four out of six countries it was also
significant at the 10% level or higher. Similarly, Di Liberto et al. (2015) focus on the relationship
between managerial practices and test scores in the Italian context, finding a positive correlation
between the two measures. Both studies confirm, however, that the application of managerial
practices in Italian schools lags behind other schools’ systems, particularly those in the UK. This
makes the need for research on the topic and evidence for the efficacy of data-driven policy making
in the Italian context particularly apparent.
An important portion of the literature cited so far is based on administrative large-scale data,
which are usually self-reported. Importantly, for the present study, such self-reported data are
characterised by a set of limitations highlighted in studies on behavioural research. Podsakoff et al.
(2003) stress the existence of various sources of bias, among which ‘social desirability’ can be
described as the tendency to give answers considered as socially acceptable. In the same vein,
Jerolmack and Khan (2014) state that self-reported perceptions can be poor predictors of actual
behaviours; however, the literature on educational leadership has widely demonstrated comparable
results across studies using self-reported instead of experimental data (Boyce and Bowers, 2018a,
2018b; Urick, 2016; Urick and Bowers, 2014b, 2017). Indeed, Day et al. (2016) use both quanti-
tative data from surveys and qualitative data from in-depth interviews showing how results from
the first can be used to obtain evidence to be corroborated by the second and vice versa.
The current research takes advantage of the fact that the literature on school leadership tries to
define the role of contextual factors and show the link with a distal outcome in terms of student
achievement. Moreover, with regard to the general context of school leadership, we do not test the
existence of a particular leadership approach, but let this information emerge from self-reported
survey data through the LCA. Only at this point do we define the relationship between groups
(clusters) of principals and student achievement. In this sense, the approach is similar to the one
applied by Urick and Bowers (2014b), who identify different types of principals across the US. A
central innovation of the present study builds on this past work by additionally including distal
information using student achievement as the outcomes.
Background: School principals in Italy before and after the reform

At the time data used in this study were collected (i.e. school year 2014–2015) there were 8513
school principals in Italy. The selection process and criteria for new principals has not changed
during the recent reforms noted below. Prospective school principals must have a masters degree
and at least five years of experience as a school teacher. The national exam for school leadership is
based on a pre-selection test, a written exam and a final interview, all managed through the
National School of Public Administration. Following this, principals have to undergo a period
of mandatory training and one of mentoring in order to enhance their managerial and leadership
skills. The managerial responsibilities of Italian principals have increased over time. In 1997 (Law
59/1997), principals were defined by law as managers for the first time. Since then, incremental
laws have enhanced their managerial role. In particular, Law 165/2001 defined a principal as the
only legal representative of the school, responsible for defining school strategies and reaching
goals. At this time, the autonomy of the school principal was highly restricted within governmental
boundaries that provided each school with a grade-specific formative plan to be enacted. This was
particularly restrictive for human resource management. In fact, principals could neither appoint or
fire teachers nor influence their salary or other incentives. The salary of both teachers and princi-
pals is based almost completely on seniority. The school’s instructional strategic plan was com-
municated externally through the Formative Offer Plan (POF), an annual document that contained
the school vision and direction for the following school year. The school principal is expected to
pay particular attention to the school curriculum and teachers’ development, as these are the two
main channels through which leaders can drive school improvement, and the evaluation of princi-
pals is based on the ability of a school to promote these activities.
Law 107/2015, approved in 2015, has produced a profound change in principals’ roles and a
decisive step towards school autonomy. From the school year 2015–2016 the POF has become
triennial (the PTOF) instead of annual, and has to be written in a way that clarifies the specific
strategies of schools in terms of objectives, operational planning, etc. From the same school year,
principals are also in charge of deciding monetary incentives for teachers. A principal’s decision
must be based on criteria defined by a school evaluation committee composed of the principal,
three teachers from the school, two parents (or one parent and one student in high schools) and an
external school expert. Some other innovations have been introduced from the school year 2016–
2017. According to the PTOF, principals have now been granted more autonomy with the possi-
bility of being able to select the teaching body from a pool of teachers who are listed on territorial
public registers of networks of schools. Teachers are reconfirmed after three years. Finally, prin-
cipals themselves receive monetary incentives based on the evaluation of a specific committee
composed of external evaluators appointed by the Ministry of Education, Universities and
Research and by another school principal. Criteria for teachers’ evaluation refer to their ability
to reach school goals set by the ministry, by the regional office and by the school itself according to
a self-evaluation report. This accountability tool has also been introduced by the reform as an
instrument for both internal and external assessment; each school self-evaluates its performance in
terms of results, educational processes and managerial processes, defining a set of goals for the
future. School self-evaluation is then published by the ministry on a website that has become a
powerful tool for external communication. Such a number of reforms towards school autonomy
and accountability might represent an actual turning point in the education system towards a more
comprehensive role of the principal as ‘manager’ and ‘leader’. Although the current situation still
limits autonomous decision making by principals, the direction of change seems clearly pointed
towards higher expectations that principals will take the lead in managerial duties of schools that
are autonomous institutions. Thus, now more than ever, it is important to investigate the issue of
school leadership and management in the Italian context in order to analyse this transition and its
relationship with school performance.
Empirical strategy
Data
Data used in the study were provided by INVALSI. This organisation assesses annually the
competencies of Italian students in reading and mathematics at given grades: Grade 2 and Grade
5 (primary school), Grade 6 (suppressed since the 2013–2014 school year), Grade 8 (lower
secondary school) and Grade 10 (upper secondary school). Current data refer to Grade 8, the
last year of lower secondary school, and to the school year 2014–2015. The test is a national-
level exam, but every year a set of schools are randomly chosen throughout the country to be part
of the national sample (NS), in which assessment is monitored by external evaluators. In the
2014–2015 wave, the NS was composed of 28,494 students across 1405 schools. Every wave is a
cross-section of data, although INVALSI began to build the panel dataset tracing the student
code from 2010. The technical procedure still encounters some minor problems of missing data
due to the lack of information about student codes across a subset of schools. The matching
procedure has been improved wave by wave, so that the most recent dataset (2014–2015)
includes prior achievement (i.e. the test score at Grade 6, first year lower secondary school)
of 21,987 students across 1326 schools.
In addition, from the school year 2013–2014, NS principals are also asked to complete a
questionnaire about their schools and the way they manage them. In the school year 2014–2015,
the questionnaire was completed by 1102 school principals across the country. It was composed
of 28 items concerning: (a) stakeholders’ attitudes towards standardised tests (principal and
teachers’ opinions); (b) stakeholders’ engagement in school issues (parents’ active participation
in school life); (c) contextual information about the availability of instructional resources and
facilities; (d) personal information about the principal (such as gender, age, education, experi-
ence); and (e) frequency of application of leadership practices and importance of principal’s
leadership role. These last two sections are those of primary importance for the current analysis.
In particular, Section (e) is the one that reports information about instructional leadership
practices in the school and it is from elaborations of this section that we derive indicators of
school leadership and management.
The kinds of questions posed to principals are in line with OECD TALIS 2008 and 2013 (OECD,
2010, 2014). The section of the survey that related school leadership and management is composed of
two groups of questions with the first concerning the frequency of application of a set of instructional
leadership practices. A total number of 12 subquestions are posed and there are four categories for
response using a Likert scale. A value equal to 1 corresponds with ‘I never use this practice’ and a value
equal to 4 corresponds with ‘I always use this practice’. The second group is comprised of a list of
statements (11 in total) about the leadership role of the principal in the school, again with reference to
the perception of leadership practices. The principal is asked to report the level of agreement with
regard to the importance of each statement in the everyday life of the school. A value of 1 corresponds
to ‘I totally disagree’ and a value of 4 corresponds to ‘I totally agree’. All the other items in the
questionnaire can have different response scales, from a 1–10-point scale to multiple choice options.
With reference to the personal information about the principal, available data refer to gender (dummy
variable), age, highest level of education attained (multiple choice answer), years of experience as a
school principal in total and at the current school, and contract type. This last information reports
whether the principal has a temporary contract (dummy variable) or a contract of regency, which
means the principal is in charge of more than one school (dummy variable). Merging the principal’s
questionnaire with the students’ results, the final sample size is n ¼ 1073 schools. In order to test for the
representativeness of this final sample, we conducted a t-test to examine any differences in the
variables used in the analysis at the school, principal and context levels. Results are reported in Annex
1 and show that the only variable significantly different (at a level below 0.10) is the school average
score in mathematics, which was slightly higher in the final sample. Overall, no other statistical
difference was detected. Given that the unit of the analysis in the study is the school, all of the
information at the student level (including test scores) is aggregated to the school level. Collapsing
this information at the school level we obtain the school average socio-economic status, an aggregated
index computed through the same procedure used by OECD (accounting for parental education,
parental occupation and home possessions). This information is obtained by a student questionnaire
and is computed and provided directly by INVALSI. Finally, we included contextual information
about the geographical location of the school (Northern, Central, Southern Italy – dummy variables)
and about whether it is publicly or privately managed and funded (dummy variable).
Methodological approach
The statistical approach used in the study is LCA, a methodology relying on the mixture modelling
framework, which identifies one or more than one unobservable latent homogenous class(es)
(cluster(s)) of individuals from a heterogeneous population (McCutcheon, 2002; Muthén and

Muthén, 2000; Muthén, 2004; Pickles et al., 1995; Samuelsen and Raczynski, 2013). In recent
years, this methodology has been applied in educational research by an increasing number of
studies (Bowers and Sprott, 2012; Bowers et al., 2017; Boyce and Bowers, 2016; Everitt, 2005;
Fagginger Auer et al., 2016; Urick and Bowers, 2014b), showing a good level of fit with educa-
tional surveys. As a ‘person-centric’ model, LCA allows for a focus on respondent patterns of
responses in order to identify the latent subgroup (latent class) that the person’s response pattern
best fits, putting the principal at the centre of the analysis. In so doing, the model allows us to
establish how the variables combine across individuals, as opposed to ‘variable-centric’ analyses
that investigate how variables relate to each other (e.g. in regressions). The model presented in this
article was run using Mplus version 7.4 (Muthén and Muthén, 2015).
Structural elements of a three-step LCA (Asparouhov and Muthén, 2014; Masyn, 2013;
Nylund-Gibson et al., 2014; Vermunt, 2010) can be summarised as:
1. A set of indicators used to define groups; these are the only factors taken into account when
investigating the existence of different subgroups across data (Step 1 of the analysis). In the
present article, we use the answers provided by school principals about their perception of
leadership practices to understand if there are groups of principals that differ substantially
in the way they would like to manage the school.
2. Covariates used to characterise the individuals belonging to each group. Being added at
Step 2, these factors are not able to influence the group’s definition (which takes place at
Step 1). Covariates then help to explain group differences, stating how much more/less
likely the individuals belonging to a group are to report a specific characteristic. For this
reason, covariates added at Step 2 usually involve contextual and individual characteristics
of the respondent. Methodologically, this correlation is measured by a multinomial logistic
regression (Step 2 of the analysis). In our article, we employ a wide array of school types,
contexts and principals’ characteristics for this purpose (e.g. socio-economic status, loca-
tion, age, experience and gender of the principal).
3. Distal outcomes included as the outputs of the model in Step 3 of the analysis. The aim is to
identify if there is any statistical difference in the distal outcome measured across groups.
Figure 1 provides the model employed in the current study. Indicators used in Step 1 consist of
the two sets of questions posed to principals about the perception of the leadership practices
implemented and their role as leaders in the school, which are descriptively presented in Table 2
together with their associated statistics. The output of the 23 possible indicators has been dichot-
omised (i.e. transformed into a binary variable) to better fit their use in a LCA framework, so that a
value of 0 corresponds to a response type of ‘Never’ or ‘Sometimes’ for the question regarding the
frequency of use of leadership practices, and to a response type of ‘Totally disagree’ or ‘Disagree’
for the question concerning the school leader role. A value of 1 is reported in the case of ‘Often’ or
‘Always’ response types for the question about the frequency of use of leadership practices and in
the case of ‘Agree’ or ‘Totally agree’ response types for the question about the school leader role.
Looking at the descriptive statistics in Table 2, we note that the questions concerning the role of the
school leader (second half of the table) tend to report a higher level of polarisation towards what is
considered the positive answer (high level of agreement). In order to deal with the trade-off
between the number of indicators and the variability across answers, we did not include in the
analysis the three items with a polarisation of answers of 99% or 1%, which is reported by the last
Figure 1. Statistical and conceptual model of the LCA of principal leadership styles.
three questions in Table 2. Thus, the actual number of indicators is 20, with 12 indicators con-
cerning the frequency of use of leadership practices and 8 reporting opinions about the role of the
principal as school leader. To determine the number of subgroups, we followed the recommen-
dations of the LCA literature (Nylund et al., 2007). We tested an iterative set of models and
assessed model fit using the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) and the Lo–Mendell–Rubin
(LMR) test (Lo, 2005; Lo et al., 2001; Muthén and Asparouhov, 2006). The BIC is a comparative
criterion based on the contrast between the k classes model and the model run with k-1 classes. The
BIC value tends to decrease with increasing the number of classes; when the BIC of the k class
model reports a higher value than the one with k-1 classes, then the best number of classes is k-1.
The LMR test provides a p-value whose significance specifies if the specification of the k classes
model is significantly better than the k-1 classes model. Once we defined the number of principals’
groups, each principal is assigned to his/her most likely class. The assignment by class, in turn, is
the output for the multinomial logistic regression run in Step 2 of the analysis. At this stage, we
consider the covariates that can have a role in predicting the distribution of school principals across
groups of leadership subgroups, namely school contextual information and personal characteristics
of the principal. Finally, the distal outcomes considered in the study are the score in the INVALSI
standardised test in both reading and mathematics, aggregated at school level. At this final stage,
the model provides a chi-square test and a p-value to assess if there is any significant difference in
the outcome across school principals who belong to different groups.
Results
Baseline results: Groups of leadership types, individual characteristics and difference
in student achievement
Applying the analysis to the INVALSI data of n ¼ 1073 school principals across Italy through our
LCA framework, we identify a three subgroup typology of school leaders across leadership styles.
Table 3 reports the main fit statistic tests leading to this finding. The model fits the data well, with
the three subgroup typology having the lowest BIC (16925.6) as well as a significant LMR test
Table 2. Descriptive statistics of questions about instructional leadership.
Frequency of use of managerial practices Seldom Often
I substitute for teachers unexpectedly absent. 77% 23%

I supervise students’ works. 73% 27%
I provide teachers with suggestions for improving their teaching effectiveness. 51% 49%
I observe educational activities in the classrooms. 46% 54%
I take into account test scores when I make decisions on the school curriculum. 26% 74%
I make sure that teachers’ professional development activities are in line with the school’s 16% 84%
educational objectives.
I make sure that responsibilities for the coordination of the school curriculum are clearly 14% 86%
defined.
I make sure that teachers work in conformity with school educational objectives. 6% 94%
I encourage work that is goal oriented and/or based on the Formative Offer Plan. 7% 93%
I deal with annoying behaviours in the classroom. 18% 82%
When a teacher has a problem in the classroom, I take the initiative to discuss it with 7% 93%
him/her.
I inform teachers about updates to disciplinary procedures and important educational 3% 97%
matters.
Opinions about their leadership role Disagree Agree
In my job, it is important to make sure that teachers’ skills are improving continuously. 2% 98%
It is important for the school to avoid mistakes in administrative procedures. 5% 96%
In my job, it is important to make sure that the educational strategies approved by the 6% 94%
ministry are explained to new teachers and applied by more experienced teachers.
In my job, it is important to be convincing when presenting new projects to parents. 13% 87%
In my job, it is important to solve timetable problems and/or lesson scheduling problems. 36% 64%
The use of students’ test scores in order to evaluate the teacher’s performance reduces the 58% 42%
value of his/her professional judgement.
Giving teachers a high degree of freedom in choosing educational techniques to use can 75% 25%
reduce teaching effectiveness.
I have no way of knowing whether teachers are performing well in their teaching tasks or 94% 6%
not.
In my job, it is important to ensure that teachers feel responsible for the achievement of 1% 99%
school objectives.
It is important that I contribute to maintaining a good school climate. 1% 99%
It is important for the school to verify that rules are respected by everybody. 1% 99%
Note: n ¼ 1073.
(p < 0.001). Additionally, the three subgroup model has a high entropy (0.707) (entropy ranges
from 0 to 1, with entropy closer to 1 being better).
Figure 2 reports the average proportion of school principals by group according to the
20 indicators (reported on the x axis). The vertical dotted line separates the indicators concerning
the perception of frequency of application of leadership and managerial practices (on the left) from
the indicators about the leadership role (on the right). We identified the three groups as educative
leaders (49% of the total), leaders who teach (35% of the total) and transactional leaders (16% of
the total). Educative leaders represent nearly half of the total sample, and show a particularly high
focus on supporting teachers’ development and training and a low level of active intervention in
Table 3. LCA results and fit statistics.
Classes AIC BIC -Log likelihood LMR test p Entropy
2 16,851.2 17,055.3 -8,875.0 974.1 0.0000 0.677

3 16,616.9 16,925.6 -8,246,6 276.3 0.0000 0.707
4 16,575.5 16,988.7 -8,204.7 82.9 0.1387 0.731
5 16,552.2 17,069.9 -8,204.7 64.8 0.4366 0.688
AIC ¼ Akaike Information Criterion; BIC ¼ Bayesian Information Criterion; LMR ¼ Lo–Mendell–Rubin likelihood ratio test.
Figure 2. Statistical indicator plots of the groups of three leadership styles.

Note: Indicators are reported on the x axis. The vertical dotted line divides questions about the frequency of
use of leadership practices (on the left) from level of agreement about the principal’s leadership role (on the
right). Educative leaders, n ¼ 526; leaders who teach, n ¼ 375; transactional leaders, n ¼ 172.
classroom activities (Drago-Severson, 2009). For the educative leaders, we drew on Duignan and
Macpherson (1987: 51) who state that ‘the use of the adjective “educative” implies the active
involvement of all members of an educational organisation as philosophers, planners and policy
makers’. Principals in this group engage with teacher activities that are in line with school goals
(99%) and promote a goal-oriented way of working (97%). In this way, these educative leaders
foster collegiality, which contributes to school improvement, and facilitate the creation of a shared
goal-oriented culture in the organisation. Principals’ actions in this group are directed towards the
development of teachers as mediators of the educational processes, more than towards student
achievement itself. They demonstrate low levels of presence in the classroom, such as substituting
for absent teachers, supervising educational activities or dealing with annoying behaviours among
students. Educative leaders support teachers’ skills development or advise them when they face
problems with students (99%).
Table 4. Description of leadership types that emerged from the LCA.
Group of school leaders Description
Educative leaders (49%) High focus on supporting teacher training and development and. Low level of
active intervention in classroom activities. Actions towards student
improvement are mediated by the role of teachers
Leaders who teach (35%) High level of application of all the leadership practices, in particular, a high level
of direct intervention in classroom activities
Transactional leaders (16%) High orientation towards procedural control and the development of teachers’
skills
Leaders who teach represent about one third of the total sample (35%) and report an average
high level of application of the practices reported, which all concern instructional leadership. They
are able to cover all the aspects of educational practices operating within the school, with the
possible risk of seeing their role as teaching. They substitute for teachers who are unexpectedly
absent (45% of principals in the group report that they do so in comparison to almost none of the
principals in the other two subgroups) and directly supervise student activities (63%) and educa-
tional activities in the classroom (95%). Hence, they perceive that they directly carry out educa-
tional activities together with the teaching body. On the other hand, they support teachers’
professional development and supervise the application of the educational strategy and curriculum.
The only two questions about their role to which less than 30% respond with a high level of
agreement are: (a) their ability to supervise teachers’ activities; and (b) the negative effect on
educational effectiveness of giving teachers high levels of freedom (10% of principals in this group
agree). The presence of this kind of leader in the classroom can be considered as a case in point for
Italy: they play their instructional role through their presence and much more directly than the role
of instructional leaders as described in the US literature. This can be interpreted in the light of the
traditional role of the school principal in Italy: primarily, that of the head of the teaching body,
arriving at this pinnacle from a teaching position that they seem willing to preserve. Finally,
transactional leaders (16%) stimulate the collaborative school environment that supports teachers
when they face problems in the classroom, and feel the importance of applying educational
strategies and controlling the application of procedures in the school. Indeed, nearly 92% of the
principals in this group perceive they pay particular attention to administrative and procedural
control. On the contrary, they do not supervise in person any educational activities and are less
involved in planning strategies and allocating responsibilities, especially in comparison with
educative leaders. In this vein, these principals interpreted their role in quite a bureaucratic manner,
without paying attention to the more managerial tasks connected with their role.
Table 4 contains a brief description of the three groups of school leaders identified.
Table 5 reports the results about the covariates used to characterise the groups. Educative
leaders are kept as the reference group as they are the largest, so the coefficients of estimations
are reported for significant measures with reference to it. The magnitude of effect is reported as
odd ratios, that is, as an estimation of the probability that a given variable is associated with a
leadership type when compared with the reference group (educative leaders).
In detail, leaders who teach are 1.92 times more likely to run schools located in Central Italy
(p-value < 0.05), and 4.55 times more likely to lead schools in Southern Italy (p-value < 0.01).
Moreover, leaders who teach are much more likely (29 times, p-value < 0.01) to manage private
Table 5. Means and odd ratios for covariates.
Transactional
Educative leaders Leaders who teach leaders
School and principal’s characteristics Mean Odds ratio Mean Odds ratio Mean Odds ratio
Average SES index 0.016 - -0.003 - 0.013 -

Context: school in Central Italy 0.19 - 0.21 1.92** 0.20 -
Context: school in Southern Italy 0.33 - 0.54 4.55*** 0.25 -
Private school 0.01 - 0.07 29.96*** 0.01 -
Age (years) 55 - 57 1.07*** 54 0.96*
Gender (female school principal ¼ 1) 0.66 - 0.74 2.27*** 0.51 0.44***
Education (PhD ¼ 1) 0.04 - 0.02 - 0.03 -
Experience as school principal (years) 9.0 - 10.2 - 9.2 -
Temporary contract 0.03 - 0.04 - 0.02 -
Contract of regency 0.08 - 0.04 0.38** 0.12 1.97*
Appointed to the school for less than two years 0.41 - 0.31 0.59** 0.38 -
SES: Socio-Economic Status.
Note: Significance tests are multinomial logistic regressions, where the dependent variable is the specific class and
independent variables are the set of school and principal’s characteristics. Significance level: *p .10; **p .05; ***p .01.
The odds ratio is reported only for significant variables and refers to the likelihood of association between the class
membership and the school/principal characteristic.
schools, although we note the extremely small number of these kinds of schools (representing just
3% of the overall sample); thus, these estimates can be imprecise and must be interpreted with
caution. With reference to the individual characteristics of school principals, leaders who teach are
more likely to be women and older than educative leaders (p-value < 0.01), who in turn are more
likely to have these characteristics than transactional leaders (p-value < 0.01). Moreover, leaders
who teach are less likely to have a contract of regency than educative leaders (p-value < 0.05).
Somehow, the fact that they do not have to manage different schools can give them a greater
possibility of actively intervening in classroom activities. In turn, transactional leaders are more
likely to manage more than one school compared with educative leaders (p-value < 0.05). Finally,
leaders who teach are also less likely to be appointed for less than two years, a span of time
indicating if the principal was already managing the school when the cohort of students analysed
(Grade 8, last year of lower secondary school) entered the lower secondary school two years earlier
(at Grade 6, first year of lower secondary school).
Finally, Table 6 reports the school average test score in mathematics and reading per group.
Results show that students in schools run by leaders who teach report a significantly different and
lower average score than students’ results in the other two groups and in both the subjects tested.
The average school score tends to be higher in reading than in mathematics, with an overall mean
of 61.3 and 54.5, respectively. However, leaders who teach report an average school score of 59.6
in reading and 52.8 in mathematics. As an additional check, we replicated the analysis for the same
sample of students at Grade 6 (Table 7), with leaders who teach still reporting significantly lower
results in mathematics. For the other two groups, average test scores are higher but not statistically
different from each other. Hence, we conclude that leaders who teach obtain significantly lower
scores, but we cannot differentiate between educative and transactional leaders in terms of student
achievement. In the subsequent sections, we present some discussions and hypotheses about the
Table 6. Means and p-values for distal outcomes (Grade 8).
Educative Leaders who Transactional

leaders (1) teach (2) leaders (3)
p-value p-value p-value
School characteristics Mean Mean Mean 1 vs 2 2 vs 3 1 vs 3
School average mathematics test 55.52 52.81 54.86 0.007 0.056 0.508
score – Grade 8
School average reading test score – 62.14 59.61 62.60 0.020 0.005 0.612
Grade 8
Note: Significance tests are Pearson chi-square.
Table 7. Means and p-values for distal outcomes (Grade 6).
Educative Leaders who Transactional

leaders (1) teach (2) leaders (3) p-value p-value p-value
School characteristics 1 vs 2 2 vs 3 1 vs 3
School average mathematics test 45.46 44.25 45.54 0.061 0.076 0.913
score – Grade 6
School average reading test 65.14 64.53 65.63 0.314 0.115 0.479
score – Grade 6
Note: Significance tests are Pearson chi-square.
nature of the difference between educational outcomes across schools led by principals with
different leadership types and include the descriptions of some tests that could be used to test the
hypotheses.
The role of contextual variables in moderating the effect of leadership types on schools’
average test scores
Moving on from the results, we aim to investigate the possible reasons behind the difference in the
educational outcomes observed. Indeed, there is evidence from the literature about the role of contextual
conditions in shaping the relationship between leadership and achievement (Leithwood and Levin,
2005; Tan, 2016). Looking at the covariates that helped shape the main characteristics of the principals
belonging to each group, a factor of particular interest in the Italian context is the geographical region
where the school is located (Agasisti and Cordero-Ferrera, 2013; Agasisti and Vittadini, 2012; Boarini,
2009, Checchi and Peragine, 2005). Going back to the analysis reported in previous sections, this
demonstrates that one of the features mostly characterising the group of leaders who teach in compar-
ison to educative leaders (this means in comparison to the other half of the sample) is the geographical
location of their schools in Southern Italy, and leaders who teach are indeed the group of principals that
report the lowest school results. In order to investigate this hypothesis we ran an ANCOVA, testing
simultaneously for the difference in school achievement across classes/groups of school principals and
across the three geographical regions (Northern, Central and Southern Italy). Results, reported in Table
8, show that the difference in test scores across groups is no longer significant (p-value ¼ 0.56 for
mathematics, 0.50 for reading) when accounting for the geographical region. On the contrary, the
Table 8. ANCOVA results accounting for the geographical region.
Mathematics school average test Reading school average test

score Grade 8 score Grade 8
Dependent variable
Source F-value p-value F-value p-value
Corrected model 42.034 0.000 17.748 0.000

Intercept 6228.965 0.000 5991.177 0.000
Class (from LCA) 0.578 0.561 0.700 0.497
Geographical region 116.884 0.000 44.702 0.000
Note: F-value and p-value reported. ANCOVA is used to test the null hypothesis according to which there is a statistical
difference in mathematics and reading test scores (dependent variables) across the classes of school leaders (independent
variable) once we control for the geographical region (covariate). In this case the null hypothesis may be rejected.
Figure 3. School average test score distribution by geographical region, leadership type and number of
principals per type.
Note: Distributions are represented by geographical regions (x axis), by class (colours) and by number of
principals (size of the box).
geographical location does have a significant role in explaining differences in achievement (p-value <
0.001 for both reading and mathematics). The geographical differentiation of student achievement and
leadership types is graphically represented in Figure 3. The distribution of the school average test score
at Grade 8 is represented by means of boxplots across geographical regions (x axis) and leadership types
(represented by different colours). Moreover, the size of the box corresponds to the number of principals
(and therefore of schools) represented by each distribution. The figure does not represent the proportion
of schools but their absolute number. This means that the size of the box is affected by the relative
distribution of principals across groups (e.g. transactional leaders, who represent 16% of the sample,
will constantly have smaller boxes than educative leaders, who comprise 49% of the total and, therefore,
are more numerous in absolute terms). In accordance with the literature on the Italian context (Agasisti
and Vittadini, 2012; Checchi and Peragine, 2005), the figure shows the geographical distribution of test
scores, with schools in Southern Italy reporting a distribution skewed towards lower values and
associated with the geographical factor. Leaders who teach, who represent 35% of the total sample,
are concentrated in southern regions (given the bigger size of the box) where school results are lowest.
Educative leaders (49% of the sample) and transactional leaders (16%) are, instead, more concentrated
in Northern Italy, where school results are, on average, higher. These descriptive statistics suggest that
there can be some self-sorting of principal types across geographical areas.
Discussion and concluding remarks

This study aimed to investigate the existence of various leadership subgroups across Italian lower
secondary schools. Moreover, each subgroup of school leaders is characterised according to
individual and contextual characteristics. Finally, the statistical difference across groups in student
achievement is investigated. We addressed the issue using data from a representative sample of
lower secondary schools and principals (n ¼ 1073). Student achievement was measured by stan-
dardised test scores at Grade 8 and Grade 6, the last and first years of lower secondary school,
respectively, in the Italian education system. Applying a LCA, we defined three subgroups of
school leaders, namely educative leaders (49%), leaders who teach (35%) and transactional leaders
(16%). Groups differ in terms of principals’ individual characteristics (age, gender, type of con-
tract) and institutional/contextual factors (public/private ownership and geographical location).
Finally, we observed a statistically significant difference across groups in student achievement,
with leaders who teach leading schools with lower test scores.
It is interesting to explore further the nature of these differences, with the aim of justifying why
principals who report a type of leadership defined as ‘leaders who teach’ serve in schools where
educational outputs are lower than in other schools. In exploring these differences, we found that
when we simultaneously accounted for differences across leadership types and across geographical
regions (a factor that has emerged as particularly important in describing groups’ disparities), this
latter factor emerged as the one explaining most of the variability in test scores. In other terms, a
geographical distribution of test scores – with schools in Northern Italy obtaining higher results
than schools in Southern Italy – is accompanied by a geographical distribution of leadership types,
with ‘teaching’ leaders more concentrated in southern regions. Interpreting these results, we are
cautious about the direction of causality between school principals’ leadership styles and school
average test scores. We provide robust evidence about the fact that schools at which principals are
seen to participate actively in the classroom have lower average test scores in reading and mathe-
matics. With the methods and data available, however, we cannot conclude that the leadership
approach causally affects test scores; it can also reasonably be the case that schools with worse
‘starting’ points are taken over by principals who, therefore, try to be more present in classroom
activities, but this is not (yet) resulting in the expected results because of time lags in the ‘pro-
duction’ of results. In addition to this, the skewed distribution of school principal groups geogra-
phically suggests there should be more mobility in two directions:
from the north to the south of Italy, to mentor colleagues with regard to more managerial-
oriented practices
from the south to the north of Italy, to experience the role and activity of school principals in
action (through internships as action-learning examples) with the knowledge gained then
being diffused in other contexts.
This geographical distribution also poses an issue of possibly needing to define a mechanism for
allocation of principals based more on their managerial ability (e.g. appointing educative leaders to
more problematic schools). It can, indeed, be the case that educative leaders are able to better
interpret their role as being one of coordinating the school’s activities, instead of it being about
‘interfering’ with the work of teachers – something that is reported by leaders who teach, and
which may be detrimental for educational outputs.
Findings are aligned with the traditional role of the school principal in Italy, a role considered to
be that of the head of the teaching body and an instructional leader, rather than that of a mature
leader and manager of a complex educational organisation. Given the centralisation of the Italian
education system, the attention given to administrative procedures and students’ supervision can be
interpreted as two channels perceived by school principals as comprising the path leading to school
improvement. However, the importance of the development of teaching skills is equally perceived
as fundamental across groups. From such a perspective, the results illustrated in this article call for
policy interventions aiming at improving the managerial capabilities and capacities of principals.
To the extent that certain leadership attitudes are associated with better academic results, they
might be promoted and diffused as good practices, moving the principals out of classrooms and
deeper into their managerial roles.
From an economic viewpoint, our study corroborates the idea that school leadership practices
are an important input in the EPF. In this respect, the finding helps understand potential features of
the ‘school effect’ (value added) that contribute to the all-important students’ test scores. In
particular, our study demonstrates that the quality of school leadership must be taken into account
as a key potential input that can act positively or negatively in the complex process of ‘producing’
education of a given quality in each school. Economic studies that aim to extend the frameworks
proposed by Bloom et al. (2015) and Di Liberto et al. (2015) should integrate the questions of the
World Management Survey – more oriented towards the description of management practices –
with the identification of leadership types as proposed in our analyses. Therefore, future directions
of research should aim at finding patterns of leadership types within a specific set of managerial
practices (in terms of areas of management, see Bloom et al., 2015; Di Liberto et al., 2015). This
would allow researchers to better investigate the relationship between leadership styles and man-
agerial practices implemented.
In terms of policy implications, our results suggest how school principals could better be
evaluated in the future. Indicators used in this process should focus on stimulating those activities
that, in turn, show a higher probability of being associated with better school academic results,
teacher training and development, for instance. At the same time, principals should be less
involved in operational activities that could influence their effectiveness in leading the whole
organisation. Finally, findings point at schools’ autonomy representing empowerment. Indeed, if
we want to exploit the potential benefits coming from managerial activities and leadership styles of
principals, we must give schools more autonomy with the aim of allowing principals to exert their
specific influence. Indeed, an area in which the powers of principals are particularly limited is that
of managing people (especially teaching staff). At the time of data collection (school year 2014–
2015), this matter (appointing, defining salary and incentives) is still highly regulated by the
Ministry of Education with unions having a strong influence. Studies about managerial practices
reveal that being able to manage people effectively is actually an important determinant for making
principals’ influence strong and meaningful (Bloom et al., 2015).
In considering one limitation of the study, we highlight the fact that results are based on
perceptions of leadership practices that do not necessarily reflect either what is actually carried
out in schools (Jerolmack and Khan, 2014) or the quality of what principals do – a fundamental
aspect when trying to explain differences in students’ results. As a methodological challenge
consequent to this study, new (and more robust) methods for observing and describing leadership
attitudes and activities and also for double-checking the current available answers that come from
self-reported data must be proposed and tested. Additionally, it has to be noticed that principals are
observed at one point in time, and that their answers to the questionnaire may be related to the
specific contingencies happening at a certain moment in a specific context and school. Hence, we
do not aim to assign neat categories at the individual level, but rather to provide a broad picture of
the main leadership types emerging among Italian school principals.
Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publi-
cation of this article.
Funding
This research was carried out within FARB “Public Management Research: Health and Education Systems
Assessment”, funded by Politecnico di Milano.
ORCID iD
Alex J. Bowers http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5140-6428
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Authors’ biographies
Tommaso Agasisti is an associate professor at the Politecnico di Milano in the Department of
Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, and co-director of the area of Institutions and
Public Administration at the MIP Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business. His studies are
in the field of public economics and finance, public management and policy, and public adminis-
tration, with particular reference to the education sector. His research has been published in several
international peer-reviewed academic journals, in the fields of both economics and education. He has
also served as a consultant to other Italian universities and public administration bodies.
Alex J. Bowers is an associate professor of education leadership at Teachers College, Columbia

University. His research interests include organisational behaviour, district effectiveness, data-
driven decision making, school and district leadership, educational assessment and accountability,
student dropout and at-risk identification, school leadership preparation, student and school tech-
nology use, and K-12 school facilities funding.
Mara Soncin is a PhD candidate at the Politecnico di Milano in the Department of Management,
Economics and Industrial Engineering. Her research interests are in the field of education, with a
focus on digital learning, school leadership and management and the use of quantitative models for
the evaluation of public policies.
Annex 1. Test of representativeness of the final sample

Initial sample Final sample
(n ¼ 1405 schools) (n ¼ 1073 schools) t-test p-value
School characteristics: composition and context

Average mathematics score 53.70 54.46 -1.770 0.077
Average reading score 60.59 61.34 -1.630 0.103
Average SES index 0.011 0.009 0.102 0.919
Context: school in Central Italy 19.9% 19.8% 0.106 0.916
Context: school in Southern Italy 40.1% 39.2% 0.457 0.648
Private school 3.13% 2.98% 0.214 0.831
Initial sample Final sample

(n ¼ 1102 schools) (n ¼ 1073 schools) t-test p-value
School principals’ characteristics

Age (years) 56 56 -0.109 0.913
Gender (female school principal ¼ 1) 66.4% 66.2% 0.126 0.900
Education (PhD ¼ 1) 3.4% 3.3% 0.125 0.901
Experience as school principal (years) 9.4 9.4 0.053 0.958
Temporary contract 3.0% 2.9% 0.145 0.884
Contract of regency 7.3% 7.5% -0.175 0.861
SES: Socio-Economic Status
Note: The initial sample refers to school level dataset (n ¼ 1405 schools) and to the school questionnaire filled by school
principals (n ¼ 1102), respectively. Merging the two datasets, the final sample of 1073 schools is the result.
Annex 2. Mplus code
Data:
File is C:\Final_dataset_with_id_and_mat_deg.dat;
Variable:
Names are
id d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 d6 d7 d8 d9 d10 d11 d12 d13 d14 d15 d16 d18 d20
d21 d23 perc_late perc_early perc_imm1 perc_imm2 perc_fem escs_class
teach_invalsi board_invalsi pon_q par_engag teach_dec e_reg pc_lab
sp_gender sp_age sp_phd sp_exp sp_exp_act sp_regency sp_det sp_out_region
sp_invalsi_engag mat_class north central south priv mean_class_ita
(continued)
Annex 2. (continued)
exp_act_dum delta_mat delta_read delta_mat_std delta_read_std mat6_avg

ita6_avg mat_deg;
Missing are all (-9999);
IDVARIABLE ¼ id;
Usevariables are d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 d6 d7 d8 d9 d10 d11 d12 d13 d14 d15 d16 d18
d20 d21 d23;
Categorical are d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 d6 d7 d8 d9 d10 d11 d12 d13 d14 d15 d16 d18
d20 d21 d23;
classes ¼ c (3);
AUXILIARY ¼ (R3STEP) escs_class central south priv sp_age sp_gender sp_phd
sp_exp sp_regency sp_det exp_act_dum;
AUXILIARY ¼ (DE3STEP) mat_class mean_class_ita;

Analysis:
Type ¼ mixture;
PROCESSORS ¼ 4 (STARTS);
MITERATION ¼ 500;
STARTS ¼ 2500 25;
STITERATION ¼ 10;
Output:
tech11;
Plot:
type ¼ plot3;
series ¼ d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 d6 d7 d8 d9 d10 d11 d12 d13 d14 d15 d16 d18
d20 d21 d23 (*);
SAVEDATA:
file is lca_mgm.txt;
save is cprob;
format is free;

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types and student achievement Reprints and permission:

results from a three-step latent

Tommaso Agasisti, Alex J. Bowers and Mara Soncin

Leadership style Core focus Description

Nevertheless, leadership takes place within specific contexts, so it cannot be analysed by

Background: School principals in Italy before and after the reform

(cluster(s)) of individuals from a heterogeneous population (McCutcheon, 2002; Muthén and

Table 2. Descriptive statistics of questions about instructional leadership.

Frequency of use of managerial practices Seldom Often

I substitute for teachers unexpectedly absent. 77% 23%

Opinions about their leadership role Disagree Agree

Table 3. LCA results and fit statistics.

Classes AIC BIC -Log likelihood LMR test p Entropy

2 16,851.2 17,055.3 -8,875.0 974.1 0.0000 0.677

Figure 2. Statistical indicator plots of the groups of three leadership styles.

Table 4. Description of leadership types that emerged from the LCA.

Group of school leaders Description

Table 5. Means and odd ratios for covariates.

Average SES index 0.016 - -0.003 - 0.013 -

Table 6. Means and p-values for distal outcomes (Grade 8).

Educative Leaders who Transactional

Note: Significance tests are Pearson chi-square.

Table 7. Means and p-values for distal outcomes (Grade 6).

Educative Leaders who Transactional

Note: Significance tests are Pearson chi-square.

Table 8. ANCOVA results accounting for the geographical region.

Mathematics school average test Reading school average test

Corrected model 42.034 0.000 17.748 0.000

Discussion and concluding remarks

Declaration of conflicting interests

Alex J. Bowers is an associate professor of education leadership at Teachers College, Columbia

Annex 1. Test of representativeness of the final sample

School characteristics: composition and context

Initial sample Final sample

School principals’ characteristics

Annex 2. Mplus code

exp_act_dum delta_mat delta_read delta_mat_std delta_read_std mat6_avg

AUXILIARY ¼ (DE3STEP) mat_class mean_class_ita;

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