The impact of generative school leadership on student performance: The case of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The primary aim of this study is to facilitate interactions among the generative school leadership of high school principals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to take responsibility for student performance. Existing research suggests that generative leadership is based on the principles of inclusiveness, employee creativity, knowledge transfer and delegation. The sample is based from nine principals from large high schools. To investigate this issue, this qualitative study assesses and analyses interviews and comments from participants. The findings show the high degree of centralisation and traditionalism of the Saudi Arabian educational sector, affecting creativity and inclusiveness, have a strong impact on student performance. The author recommends implementing teacher practitioner training to implement open-ended tasks teaching practices.

Keywords

creativity generative leadership performance school school principals

Introduction

Problem statement and rationale

School leadership is a major field of interest in academia due to the fact that the leadership behaviour of principals may have a direct effect on educational outcomes within the kindergarten, primary, intermediate and upper school systems that are in use in that country. For instance, recent empirical research programmes have demonstrated that leadership can foster employee skills or improve the learning orientation of the school as a whole (Sergis et al., 2018; Thawinkarn et al., 2018). Thus, it is relevant to refer to this framework in order to investigate how to improve student performance. That said, a major caveat of the current works concerning the possible influence of school leadership is that they fail to establish specific links between different leadership styles and student results. For example, Vanblaere and Devos (2016) referred to the holistic learning process rather than opt to focus their research upon a particular facet of the educational and leadership experience; on the whole their work culminated in a focus that was determined upon the degree of subject acquisition by the students. It is therefore necessary to address relevant knowledge gaps in the contemporary research on the academic sector (Jayan et al., 2016: 540); the concept of generative leadership has been chosen for this purpose. At this juncture, it is worth noting that Dunham (2018: 1) sees generative leadership as those ‘observable, executable, learnable, and improvable’ qualities that can be developed through education and which are associated with an effective leadership system that changes the competence of teachers and educational leaders.

As a multilevel dynamic construct, it is feasible that a process of leadership, which involves empowerment and its encouragement, also encompasses leadership capabilities and behaviours; this model is a valuable area of study (Macaux, 2012). Nonetheless, this decision limits the explanatory power of the study to generative leadership only and ignores such well-established approaches as transformational or transactional leadership. Here it is of note that Zimmerman (1990) argues that the core difference between transactional and transformational leadership is the process that is used to empower the target individual. The former is based upon compliance while the latter focuses on empowerment. In both cases, though, neither should be negated in terms of their ability to realise change, particularly in respect of the ability to latterly exercise operational autonomy. However, the study by Izhak Berkovich scrutinises what he states to be common concepts regarding transformational leadership, significantly the point where he states that transformational behaviours tend to be a more effective method than transactional behaviours (Bush, 2018).

Focus of the study

Saudi Arabia is typical of contemporary educational systems that include primary, lower secondary and upper secondary programmes within their learning frameworks. These are highly diverse and include private, internationally sponsored and public schools (Aburizaizah et al., 2016). Within this framework there exists noteworthy issues affecting the performance of Saudi schools as a whole. For instance, Aldiab et al. (2017) highlighted that many Saudi schools were reluctant to adopt e-learning technologies, which implied that the teaching practices within Saudi Arabia were underdeveloped. Thus, there exists a knowledge gap regarding the need for a comprehensive study suggesting mechanisms that can be leveraged by Saudi academics (Saqlain et al., 2013). The author asserts that school principal leadership (namely the generative paradigm of leadership) is a possible solution to improving overall institutional capacity rather than through a centralised system of educational governance. However, no secondary Arabic educational studies have been found that explicitly link principal leadership styles to student performance, meaning that it is possible to make a notable contribution to the Saudi Arabian context by investigating the outlined relationship.

Aims and objectives of the study

The main aim of the study is to evaluate how generative leadership behaviour among principals affects students’ performance in upper schools in the Riyadh region of Saudi Arabia. This goal is attained by relying on the following objectives:

To establish the key definitions and behaviours associated with generative leadership.

To identify how student performance may be measured in high schools.

To examine whether the adoption of the generative leadership style produced a positive impact on student performance in Saudi Arabian high schools.

To provide practical recommendations to the directors of Saudi Arabian high schools with regard to leadership.

Literature review

Key definitions of generative leadership

Generative leadership can be defined as a paradigm of leadership behaviours focused on nurturing positive dynamic capabilities among its followers (Klimek et al., 2008). In other words, generative leaders position themselves as mentors, whose task is to improve the core workplace processes and decision-making mechanisms typically employed by their subordinates (Dua, 2016: 3; Klimek et al., 2008). Great leadership mentoring can allow their mentees to visually see what great leadership looks like. Different types of skills can be used to show them that and will encourage them and drive them forward. It can also develop and expand their determination when they can see progress they are commencing (Dugan and Komives, 2010). This is illustrated in Figure 1 in comparison with leadership systems that allow complacency to creep into the practice setting.

Figure 1.

Generative versus stagnant styles of leadership. Source: Macaux (2012: 449).

It has been shown that generative leadership is mainly based on four dimensions; these factors include the overall quality of the workplace environment (care and inclusion), employee creativity (creative tendencies), knowledge management and transfer (motivated to impart knowledge) and delegation (encouraging others) (Macaux, 2012). One critical point regarding Macaux’s (2012) framework is that its applicability to the academic sector remains questionable. In fact, the vast majority of the knowledge on educational leadership is lacking in terms of generative leadership. Namely, Gencer and Samur (2016) focused on technological leadership and how school principals can facilitate the implementation of new learning technologies. Another study conducted by Ariratana et al. (2015) highlighted how leadership soft skills could be developed among school administrators, but it failed to discuss the link between these capabilities and student outcomes. The key implication of this research gap is that the current study is the first empirical investigation of its kind to analyse the value of generative leadership in the educational context.

Macaux’s (2012) perspective could be expanded further by stating that generative leadership in schools is based on the assertion that the academic setting is a dynamic setting in which the quality of the outcomes is dependent on the social interactions among the key participants (the students, the regular teachers and the principals). Thus, in contrast to such approaches as transformational leadership, generative leadership allows for a greater degree of follower freedom and prioritises process-centric improvements over other possible changes. The main implication of this definition is that generative leadership could be crucial in attaining sustainable long-term school success by empowering teachers to be innovative and efficient in their classroom practices and decision-making (Robinson and Tagher, 2017). However, given the fact that employee behaviours can often deviate from the workplace expectations and organisational goals, this raises the issue of whether generative leadership can truly make a notable impact on student outcomes (Hazy and Uhl-Bien, 2014).

The possible impacts of generative leadership

The outlined discrepancy could be investigated by establishing the potential impacts of each of the individual dimensions of generative leadership. Regarding the attitude of care and inclusion and being tolerant to differences, a major remark made by the study undertaken by Cimentepe and Bingol (2017) is that the global teacher workforce is facing the challenge of ethnic and cultural diversity. This is particularly relevant for Saudi Arabia, in which expatriates are considered to be more skilful than the native labour force (Carey, 2018: 1). Additional complications arise in the educational context, as Saudi private and foreign investment schools may want to hire foreign teachers for language subjects (Cimentepe and Bingol, 2017). However, the resulting differences in workforce composition could lead to cultural conflicts and a negative workplace atmosphere which may have a negative impact upon teacher performance and institutional capacity (Wassell et al., 2018). Thus, generative leadership could prove valuable by actively fostering conflict resolution and treating all teachers equally (Civitillo et al., 2018). On the other hand, these objectives are focused on the school personnel and not on students. Due to the lack of secondary Arabic educational data, it is impossible to clearly establish the impact of inclusivity on student outcomes, which highlights the contribution made by this study.

A contrasting point could be made with regard to teacher and student creativity. There exists strong evidence highlighting the fact that teacher creativity in terms of classroom practices is directly reflected in the levels of ingenuity displayed by the students (Wang and Kokotsaki, 2018). For instance, Soh (2017: 58) posited that many students are creative by nature but require outside reinforcement to fully display innovative behaviours. In turn, teacher encouragement could fulfil this function (Soh, 2017). These findings support the perspective that generative leadership could be a strong influence on student outcomes. As well as that, there are several different points and skills that will allow a teacher to grow into a leader of collaborative professionalism. According to Hargreaves and O’Connor (2018), a factor to achieve that is to ‘Build slowly; act fast’, which would allow a person to expect to have low and bad moments before the good can come. Another point is ‘Increasingly integrate formal and informal collaboration’ that suggests to increase a level of collaboration; some sort of help is needed to start the procedure. As it is significant to start somewhere but not anywhere. Hargreaves and O’Connor (2018) also use the point of ‘Learn to let go’ as another point to improve a person’s collaborative professionalism. This can be encouraged either by mentoring and coaching or by just simply leaving it and stepping out of the way.

On the other hand, the leadership behaviours of generative principals oriented towards greater creativity could be met with resistance from the teachers who prefer to follow the more well-known curricula and classroom strategies (Bereczki and Kárpáti, 2018). Similarly to the results for diversity, this is interpreted as meaning that the impact of generative leadership may be moderated by the paradigms adopted by the regular teachers.

Turning now to knowledge management, generative leadership is stated to transfer the best practices and insights pertaining to the educational process to all personnel and the new hires in particular (Macaux, 2012). This could have a beneficial effect on how teachers behave and adjust to the working conditions, particularly if this staff is less experienced and requires help from their colleagues (Voss et al., 2017). On the other hand, the shared knowledge could clash with the existing perceptions and stereotypes exhibited by the participants of the educational process, resulting in misconceptions and disruptions (Glogger-Frey et al., 2018). Moreover, some professional insight may lose value or become obsolete with the introduction of new technologies (e.g. tablets) or school restructuring (Kontagora et al., 2018). Overall, the theoretical relationship between generative leadership and student outcomes is not unambiguously positive with regard to knowledge transfer. It is expected that the benefits of generative leadership would be largely situational in relation to this component of the framework.

Considering delegation, the final component of generative leadership, it is noted that the practice of allocating higher-order tasks to the regular teachers may prove advantageous. More specifically, Cheng and Szeto (2016: 140) provided strong evidence in favour of the fact that teachers were able to develop new competencies when completing these goals, which were then positively reflected in their classroom practices. An analogous point of view was reported in the article of Nolan and Molla (2017), which states how crucial mentoring is in the creation of the professional attribute. They continue to say that teacher confidence is a function that stems towards teacher professional capital. At the same time, not all teachers may be emotionally ready for delegation because they are not readied for autonomous working practice, or operate without direct supervision, which could lower their motivation and classroom performance (Asrar-ul-Haq et al., 2017). It is inferred that student performance may not be affected by delegation. Based on the above discussion, it is uncertain whether the skills gained by the teachers would necessarily result in more positive educational outcomes for students. That said, empirical testing is needed to verify whether there is indeed a link between generative leadership and student performance.

Framework of the study

Figure 2 shows the framework of the study.

Figure 2.

Framework of the study. Source: Created for the study.

To summarise, a major gap in the current body of knowledge regarding educational leadership is the impacts of this aspect on student outcomes. While the influence of leadership on teacher behaviours is well-researched, linking generative leadership to student performance is a novel approach. The author admits that the model above suggests that teacher practices and strategies are an average influence on this connection, which may not be the case in real life.

Research design

A major caveat concerning the research design is the difficulty in measuring student outcomes of the leadership approach. The most widespread approach in the educational sector is to rely on standardised test scores to achieve this goal, which would provide this study with clear quantitative data (Barrera-Osorio and Ganimian, 2016). Nevertheless, there also exists a consensus that this approach does not reflect the full range of skills and capabilities that can be possessed by the students (Barrera-Osorio and Ganimian, 2016). For instance, the spirit of leaders needs more forms of examining and time to grow and develop for it to be used on a more regular basis. Switching from test indices to letter grading does not solve this problem, as this paradigm typically does not account for overachievers (Song, 2018: 133). In addition, strict numerical or letter-based categories are insufficient to capture the social and cognitive development of students going beyond the subject covered by the school curricula (Allen et al., 2019: 1). Consequently, the current investigation may benefit from discarding quantitative evidence entirely.

The study follows a qualitative method by conducting interviews with principals of high schools in Saudi Arabia (Saunders et al., 2015). The main inclusion criteria were the knowledge of and the ability to implement generative leadership in the workplace. Originally, 30 random school directors were contacted via postal mail with a request to participate in the study and a consent form, 15 of which ultimately met the inclusion benchmarks (Daniel, 2011: 66). Only nine school principals responded positively to this invitation. To maintain anonymity, the study participants were provided with a list of questions to which they recorded their answers without the personal presence of the researcher (the full list of the interview questions is given in Appendix 1). The questions used in the interview were mainly open questions with a few that were leading questions. The interviewees were also asked to name their recordings with a random identifier (Latin letters and Arabic numerals in any sequence) and upload the results to a designated file transfer service. Thus, the researcher had no opportunity to link the recordings to the actual schools included in the research sample. The objective of that is to remain as unbiased as possible and to provide a fairer outcome. This was done to protect the rights of the study participants and minimise possible confidentiality breach risks (ESRC, 2015). The interview recordings were transcribed and the most significant quotes are presented as the main method of data analysis (Saunders et al., 2015).

Findings and discussion

The influence of generative leadership on student performance: The perspective of the school principals

The interviewees highlighted that student performance went beyond stereotypical test measurements, supporting the findings of Barrera-Osorio and Ganimian (2016). For instance, it was stated that ‘Our school aims to prepare students for professional life and higher education abroad, which is not necessarily reflected in how they perform in government-issued tests’. The behaviours and dynamic capabilities of the students were significant markers of student performance and therefore represented the potential impacts of generative leadership. That said, some interviewees asserted that ‘We really wanted to be creative in measuring student performance, but we have to adhere to the educational standards of Saudi Arabia’, highlighting a major discrepancy between the academic and governmental levels. This is due to bureaucracy governments who act upon the educational ministry, even though the Saudi government tries to by allowing more freedom given to ‘King Abdulaziz and his Companions foundation for Giftedness and Creativity’ programme which will develop more in the future as it grows steadily.

Regarding student performance, Alharthi (2017) notes that standards are centrally controlled. This includes control over the curriculum, including in private schools, and relates student achievement and attainment directly as a calculation of teacher competence, that is, above average of failures indicates poor teacher performance. The principles are, therefore, performance-related and are found at two levels, the institutional competence report and the job performance report (Alharthi, 2017). This process allows teachers to access the internal job report but not the competence report, which is drafted for the perusal of the state, and as stated, performance and competence appear to be directly linked to attainment.

Turning now to the constituents of generative leadership, teacher inclusion was evaluated positively in terms of student performance. Specifically, it was exemplified that ‘making a positive workplace environment allows teachers to fully express their professional qualities, raising classroom performance’. This was in line with the arguments provided in the work of Civitillo et al. (2018). At the same time, other school directors acknowledged that ‘although inclusion positively affected workplace atmosphere and reflected well on school status, student behaviours were often highly individualistic and difficult to manage directly’. This supports the theoretical statement that the impacts of generative leadership only affect student performance through teacher competencies and strategies, and appears to be in line with the performance and competence system of internal verifications that take place within the centralised structure.

Regarding creativity, this dimension served as the major influence on student performance. An interviewee said that, ‘Since student performance for us is the overall degree to which the students are prepared for their adult life, being creative is essential, by the programs set by the King Abdulaziz and his Companions foundation for Giftedness and Creativity’. In other words, the fact that student performance in itself is a heterogeneous dimension going beyond objectively measured data demanded high levels of creativity from regular teachers and school principals (Barrera-Osorio and Ganimian, 2016). However, a major theme among the interview transcripts was that ‘not all creative solutions offered by the teachers were universally effective for all students’. Although generative leadership was a valid foundation for improving student performance, additional creative efforts had to be exhibited by the regular teachers to ensure that this effect manifested in a variety of classroom contexts. Another point brought up was that ‘the teachers have a strong level of encouragement towards their pupils to promote the idea of studying abroad in distinguished universities’.

In contrast to creativity, encouraging knowledge exchanges presented more issues than benefits. The main cause for this was the conflict between the traditional paradigms of teaching frequently implemented in Saudi Arabia, which is centrally organised and takes little account of local dynamics, and the new strategies utilised by expatriates or novice personnel. One of the school principals posited that ‘It is challenging to reconcile the points of view exhibited by my experienced teachers and our new hires’, while another revealed that ‘Non-Saudi natives rely on radically unique teaching methods during language classes, such as the use of authentic (real world) teaching and learning strategies that now overlap with forms of e-learning, such as second language skills via email and blog drafting’ (Widdowson, 2002). Indeed, Widdowson (2002) adds that this approach offers a sense of realism to the education process and that learners are able to relate to both the subject and the skills used to encourage personal learning. This approach is considered often met with opposition from our more traditional stakeholders. Subsequently, it is acknowledged that due to the anonymised and randomised data collection process, the researcher was unable to ask for any additional clarifications and identify the specific teaching methods that were perceived as the most problematic. Nonetheless, gaps in knowledge caused by this vacuum can be filled via secondary data obtained through the works of, for example, Macaux (2012) and Ariratana et al. (2015).

A similar point could be made for the delegation of tasks. A participant suggested that this was ‘a valuable method of training’ but that it did not necessarily affect student performance. This perspective was an individual one though, which is difficult to support. Nevertheless, the impacts of generative leadership were only moderate. In addition, generative leadership conflicted with the existing educational system in Saudi Arabia. For example, it was shown that a majority of participants said that ‘due to high school centralisation, it is very difficult to rely on radically new paradigms of leadership and teaching since, as stated, the education system is governed via centralised controls that also are geared towards monitoring teacher performance from an administrative process. The value of generative leadership may have been limited by the pre-existing educational stereotypes materialising at the governmental level, particularly regarding the role of function of education in society and state (Alharthi, 2017). That said, the study was unable to determine whether this was true for all schools or only for state-run academic institutions.

Discussion of the findings

Concerning the core frameworks of generative leadership, the model of Macaux (2012) was only partially supported by the study. While creativity and inclusion were possible sources of long-term teacher effectiveness and student performance, the same could not be said for knowledge transfer and delegation. This was largely caused by the contextual characteristics of Saudi Arabia and the existing conflict between the traditional and new paradigms of education within this setting. A major and novel point introduced by the study is that the value of school principal leadership styles may be highly dependent on the overall academic and stakeholder-related factors, which was not covered in the existing body of knowledge on the subject (Macaux, 2012). Therefrom the transformation that dominated the job title from manager to leader, then driving practices are slowly starting to become more active in the overall school environment.

Another major contribution of the study is that student performance is at least partially influenced by the emotional well-being of the regular teachers. This was exemplified by the dimension of inclusiveness, as generative leadership improved the quality of the workplace environment and reduced the number of conflicts and cultural clashes (Cimentepe and Bingol, 2017). The participants agreed that ‘A sense of leadership allows the creation of spirit and knowledge that stem directly from the person himself. An example would be set by the teacher for the students to follow their method that would allow them to be leaders of the classroom later in the future’. The most probable explanation for this result is that the positive emotional states of the teachers allowed the personnel to improve their own teaching skills, which was reflected in the multilevel construct of student performance.

A significant point made by exploring the dimensions of generative leadership is that this style serves as a source of long-term academic success for schools due to its focus on improving the capabilities of the personnel through a process which could expand institutional capacity (Macaux, 2012). Despite the fact that the current theories on the subject argue that inclusion, creativity, knowledge transfer and delegation are of equal importance, only creativity was highlighted by the study as a significant driver of student performance. This aligns with the findings of Wang and Kokotsaki (2018) and Soh (2017), grounding the empirical findings in the perspectives detailed by other researchers. It is possible that, as defined by the interviewees, fostering creativity allows teachers to rely on innovative teaching methods, such as Widdowson’s (2002) offer of authentic learning strategies, which prove to be more effective in comparison to more traditional approaches. This includes the use of teacher-centric practices that work on a system of educational banking where information is imparted to the learners who merely acquire knowledge but without the development of analytical competence (Arikson, 2008). Nonetheless, it is also possible to develop the argument of Wang and Kokotsaki (2018) and propose that the students of the Saudi Arabian high schools may have been inspired by their teachers to improve their own creativity, resulting in higher performance. The most suitable explanation is that the phenomena are equally valid within the study context.

The final highlight of this empirical project was that the positive impacts of principal leadership could be constrained by attributes beyond the control of individual high schools, which has not been overtly discussed by other researchers focusing on the topic of generative leadership. An example of this is the Saudi government introducing new curriculum in secondary schools regarding skills of life and philosophy of life. This significantly expands the outcomes explained by Voss et al. (2017) and Cheng and Szeto (2016). In the case of Saudi Arabia, this aspect manifests because of the country’s centralised educational system, which demands that all state-run schools adhere to the same rigid standards and expectations despite possible contextual differences (e.g. labour composition) among these institutions. The main implication of this observation is that the high level of governmental authority in Saudi Arabia may prevent principal leadership from increasing student performance. That said, it is unknown whether this reality would be valid for other countries aside from Saudi Arabia.

Conclusions and recommendations

Summary of the findings

Generative leadership was defined as a construct including four main dimensions, namely inclusivity, creativity, knowledge transfer and delegation. In theory, all of these aspects improved the dynamic capabilities of the regular teachers and positively affected student performance (research objectives 1 and 2) This is proven by the developing performances in classrooms and obtaining higher test results, also by competing in local and regional competitions shows an improvement of student performance. However, the contextual factors present in Saudi Arabia, most notably high school authority centralisation, presented the school principals with obstacles in implementing the generative leadership style. In turn, this meant that only inclusiveness and ingenuity had an impact on student performance. The key implication of this result is that the effectiveness of school leadership may be limited by the characteristics of the academic sector, which are not controlled by the principals themselves.

Recommendations for the principals of Saudi Arabian high schools

The key suggestion made to the directors of Saudi Arabian high schools is to focus on teacher creativity, as this was the main channel for amending student performance among study participants. This can be done by developing teacher training initiatives focused on the implementation of such classroom exercises as open-ended questions or tasks, support of risk-taking in problem-solving, and the generation of novel ideas (Richardson and Mishra, 2018: 45). This is in line with the main principles of generative leadership and should serve as a direct influence on student outcomes. On the other hand, the principals may encounter challenges in overcoming the traditional perceptions and stereotypes regarding teaching due to the prevalence of these opinions in Saudi Arabia (Wang and Kokotsaki, 2018). Direct employee communication detailing the need for change may be a possible solution to the outlined problem (Wang and Kokotsaki, 2018).

An analogous argument could be made with regard to creating the atmosphere of inclusiveness and care for all teachers. Although the impacts of this dimension on leadership were moderately beneficial, the effects of employee meetings and cross-cultural training on student performance were less obvious than for employee creativity, the mentioned component of generative leadership that may be the main method of achieving the necessary organisational objectives (Macaux, 2012). At the same time, the study proposes that the tenets of generative leadership may be expanded not only to the personnel but to the students themselves. While this was not highlighted directly by the interviewees, establishing an attitude of care and attention towards students with disabilities or special learning needs, for example, could be a vital technique for boosting performance among these populations (Hu et al., 2017: 25; Yada and Savolainen, 2017). It is admitted that the interviews provided insufficient material regarding which specific steps should be taken by the school principals to achieve this goal, however.

A crucial finding of this study was that the discrepancy between generative leadership and the traditional paradigms of teaching in Saudi Arabia limited the impact of school leadership. Thus, there exists a need to reconcile these opposing doctrines. Arguably, leadership systems can be used to attain this goal. Organisational culture serves as a series of behavioural guidelines and artefacts for the personnel of a given institution (Warrick, 2017: 395). The generative leaders may focus their efforts on creating a strong narrative aimed at minimising internal organisational conflict and benefiting student performance (Desselle et al., 2018: 403). Nonetheless, while the applicability of organisational culture is high in Western countries, it remains to be seen what adaptations, such as increased autonomy and using teacher judgement (Weaver and Padron, 1994), would need to be made in Saudi Arabia (Desselle et al., 2018).

Limitations and directions for future study

The narrow focus of the study served as its key limitation. Other research projects may benefit from investigating generative leadership in different countries of the Middle East or the Western world (Saunders et al., 2015). The results of these projects could serve as valid points of comparison for Saudi Arabia. In addition, it may be possible to investigate the perspectives of permanent teachers and examine the gap between the principals’ application of generative leadership and the actual performance outcomes for the personnel.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Abdullah Alghulayqah

Appendix 1

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