School Administrators’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Leadership Styles

The effectiveness of schools, that is, their ability to achieve their pre-determined goals depends on many variables but especially the effectiveness of the administrators who are responsible for the implementation of the educational programs and curricula. An administrator must have a healthy perception of being "an effective administrator" in order to be able to demon strate expected roles successfully. Concerning school effectiveness, in addition to the emphasis of self-efficacy of administrator, the leadership role of the educational administrators has gained importance with modern educational administration approaches. If an administrator wants to be effective, he/she must act as a leader and convince followers. In this context, when questioning the effectiveness of schools, it is important to determine the level of self -efficacy perceptions of administrators and to determine the leadership styles displayed by them. In this study, it was aimed to examine whether there is a significant relationship between the perceived self-efficacy belief and leadership style. The results show that self -efficacy perceptions of the administrators make a difference in their leadership style and there is a relationship between the self-efficacy belief and exhibitors of transformational leadership behaviors; the more administrators feel themselves efficient, the more they exhibit transformational leadership behaviors.


Introduction
There are many factors impacti ng school effectiveness.The variables that discriminate effective schools from the others are high expectations that every student can l earn, a clear mission, learning opportuniti es for every student, using instructional time effectively, monitoring the development of the students, having a school admi nistrator who is an instructional l eader, and a positive relationship between schools and the parents (Cobanoglu and Badavan, 2017).Among these vari ables, it is possible to claim that school effectiveness is mostly based on the administrator who is responsible for conducting the educational and instructional programs at school ( Purkey&Smith, 1982;Edmonds, 1979;Levine&Lezotte, 1990;Stefano, 2003;Maciel, 2005).Indeed, one of the most important problems of Turkish educational system is the training, selecting and appointing the school administrators (Kosterelioglu&Bayar, 2014).
Self-efficacy based on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1977;1994) is the belief of an individual to him/herself to perform an expected behavior in cas e of the situations affecting his/her life (Bandura, 1994).Administrators' selfefficacy beliefs are crucial for managi ng a school and can be referred as a kind of l eadership self -efficacy that one is being confident in his/her knowledge, skills and abilities (Hannah, Avolio, Luthans and Harms 2008).An administrator should have a healthy perception of being an effective administrator i n order to perform the expected rol es.Apart from the self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators, contemporary administrative approaches and leadership role of the administrator are also important factors for an effective school.The school administrator has integrated the rol es of a program manager in 1960s, an i nstructional leader in 1980s and a transformational leader in the 1990s (Vandenberghe, 1995).If an administrator wants to be effective, s/he should act as a group leader and persuade his/her followers.In this sense, when considering the school effec tiveness, it is also important to examine the selfefficacy beliefs of the administrators on administration, and moreover their leadership styles.

School Administrators' Self-Efficacy Beliefs
The job defini tion of the school admi nistrators involves managing the people, environment and the program.This position requires information and skills from various disciplines however this is not still enough.The success of the school administrators on this hard mission depends on the positive perception of them tow ards having self-efficacy for the task.McCollum and Kajs (2015) point out that self-efficacy is an important factor for the motivation becaus e people tend to avoid actions that they believe they would fail.Required skills and knowledge are not enough to complete a task, besides "the belief of having these" is also necessary.
Self-efficacy of administrators is essential for a school management (Fisher, 2014) and the principal beliefs effect their behaviors and teacher commitment (Hallinger, Hosseingholizadeh, Hashemi and Kouhsari, 2017).School administrators, who have a high level of self-efficacy beliefs, are determined to pursue their goals.They are more open to adopting new strategi es in different situations.Change is a slow process for them and whil e they are faithful to their goals they do not hesitate to change their strategy if necessary (Osterman&Sullivan, 1996).Furthermore, these administrators do not perceive unsolved problems as a failure.They can adapt thei r personal expectations ev en in ha rd conditions (Tschannen-Moran&Gareis, 2004).In this sense, school administrators having a high level of self-efficacy beliefs might be more effective and qualified in the process of improving the school.As a matter of fact, the schools of thes e kinds of administrators are expected to be more effective and successful because it might directly affect teachers, students, and the staff.As Kelleher (2016) indicates, variables such as school effectiveness, teaching and learning quality, effective leadership are all related to administrators' self-efficacy.Similarly, in a study of Isik and Gumus (2017), self-efficacy perceptions of administrators are closely related to school effectiveness.School administrators, who have a high level of self-efficacy beliefs, feel responsible for s tudents' success.They have the possibility of using intrinsic personal power such as expertness, informing and reference.They rely on personal power resources rather than politics, procedures or legal regulations in order to influence the teachers (Lyons&Murphy, 1994).

School Administrators' Self-Efficacy and Leadership Style
Leadership is required continuously an effort of goal -orientation, effective task strategies, and artistic practicing of various conceptual, technical and interpersonal skills.A strong s ense of efficacy is needed to make an effort for actualizing the goals of the ins titution (Tscjannen-Moran&Gareis, 2004).Leadershi p self-efficacy is the perceived ability of a person that s /he performs the required cogni tive and behavioral tasks in order to reach the group goals.In other words, it is a person's s elf-confidence towards taking the l ead of a group successfully (McCormick, 2001).Leithwood (2008) underlined that this self-confidence is a significant property for an effective leadership in leaders hip literature.What McCollum and Kajs (2015) also added that the actions of the leaders are affected by their thoughts and beliefs.Self-efficacy of the school administrators is the belief towards the ability to develop the i nstruction and student learning.Leaders' behaviors are considered to influence the schools, classes, and students learning (Leithwood&Jantzi, 2008).Moreover, considering that the total effect of leadership on student learni ng is one -fourth of school's total effect (Leithwood, Seas hore, Anderson and Wahlstrom, 2004), the self -efficacy belief that the administrator has become a question of matter.Leadership success of the school administrators depends on thei r self -efficacy beliefs apart from the required abilities they have.
The only and the most important reason of the success or failure in educational institutions is accepted as leadershi p, and i nstitution members think that the leader is res ponsible for the school performance (Hoy&Miskel, 2012: 375).Considering the literature, school administration is always associated with the leadership, and the administrators are expected to perform leadership behaviors.The high level of self-efficacy beliefs is related to a leader's behaviors who makes an effort for a change in the institution, searches for an innovation, and uses creative approaches to gain the goals and professional autonomy (Paglis&Green, 2002).On the other hand, low level of self -efficacy beliefs means not to perform all these behaviors because self-efficacy beliefs have a direct influence on the actions of the individuals.The effort that people will make and to pursue i t depends on the s elf-efficacy beliefs (Lei thwood&Jantzi, 2008).Thus, the self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators might create a difference in the behaviors or leadership styles of them.
There is a body of research on administrators' self-efficacy (Ata, 2015;Acat, Ozyurt and Karadag, 2011;Demirtas&Caglar, 2012;Koy basi, 2017;Fisher, 2014;Tschannen-Moran&Gareis, 2007;Okutan &Kahveci, 2012;Osterman&Sullivan 1996;Santamaría, 2008;Sazali, 2010;Smith, Guarino, Strom &Adams 2006), and its relation to various variables such as ability to manage a school (McCollum&Kajs, 2015); using power (Lyons&Murphy, 1994); student achievement (Williams, 2012); job autonomy, job satisfaction and contextual constraints (Federici, 2013).Moreover, in a study by Ramchunder and Martins (2014), the relationship between general self -efficacy beliefs and leadership s tyles were examined.Nev erthel ess, the association between administrators' self-efficacy beliefs and their leadership styles were scarcely investigated.Thus, the current research aims to inves tigate the perceived self -efficacy beliefs of the admi nistrators towards administration, and which of the leadership style (transformational, trans actional and laissez-faire) they perform.Hoy and Miskel's (2012) transformational leadership model, which is prominent in administration literature and an effective and extensive theory for the leaders of social organizations, was grounded in the research.Moreover, the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and the leadership styles were examined also.

Research Goal
Relational screening model was used in this descriptive research.Relational screening models aim to determine the level of relations between two or more variables, or whether there exists a relation (Karas ar, 1999).The current research investi gated the perceived self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators towards administration, and which of the leadership style (transformational, transactional and laissez -faire) they perform and then the relationship between the administrators' self-efficacy beliefs and their leadership styles.

Sample and Data Collection
The study group of the res earch consists of 105 administrators working in state primary, secondary and high schools in Tatvan-Bitlis, Turkey during the 2017-2018 academic years.The study s ample included 93 administrators randomly selected from different schools, and the administrators were included in the study after the researcher explained the concept of the study at schools.Table 1 displays the demographics of the administrators.

Data Collection Tools
In order to inves tigate the self-efficacy beliefs of the admi nistrators, "Administrator's Self-Efficacy Scale" dev eloped by Tschannen-Moran and Gareis ( 2004) and adapted to Turkish by Negis-Isik and D erinbay (2015) was used.It is an 18item on a 9 point Likert scale (1-Never, 9-Pretty much).Oguz (2008) was used.As a 49-item and a 5 point Likert scale, it deals with three types of style that are transformational, trans actional and laissez-fai re leadershi p styles.Table 3 displays the comparative results of reliability and factor analysis of the scale by Oguz (2008), and for this research.

Analyzing of Data
Before the analysis, the data were examined according to skewness and kurtosis values to determine its normal distribution (Buyukozturk, 2006: 40).The skewness and kurtosis coefficients were -.786 and .886res pectively for the Self-Efficacy Scale, and -.088 and .077respectively for the Leadership Style Scale.As these val ues are between +1 and -1, and the values of median and mode are close to each other, the data were considered as normally distributed.So parametric tes ts were used for the data analysis.However, the normality premise cannot be meet for the comparison of self-efficacy beliefs because the number of the participants were under 30 so nonparametric tes ts were used.In order to investi gate the lev el of self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators, ari thmetic mean and s tandard deviation were used.
The difference between the maximum (162) and mi nimum (18) scores obtai ned from the scale was calculated and divided by the number of intervals (5).In order to determine the leadership style of the admi nistrators, arithmetic means and standard deviation of the responses were calculated.Moreover, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation was used to investi gate the relationship between the level of self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators and their leadership style.

Findings / Results
The administrator's self-efficacy As seen in Table 4, school administrators had the level of "pretty much" self-efficacy beliefs.The Mann-Whitney U test was conducted in order to investi gate whether there was a significant difference between the self -efficacy beliefs of school administrators according to their gender (see Table 5).There is no significant difference between the self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators according to their gender (p>.05).In other words, the self-efficacy beliefs of male and female administrators are similar to each other.
Table 6 displays Kruskal -Wallis and Mann-Whi tney U tes ts results made to investi gate the significant difference between the self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators accordi ng to their s eniori ty, education level and school level that they are working in.There was no difference between the self-efficacy levels of the administrators in terms of their s eniori ty, the school that they graduated and the level of school they are working in.

Leadership style
The arithmetic mean and standard deviation values for school administrators' leadership styles determi ned according to their perceptions were displayed in Table 7.As shown in Table 7, schoo l administrators mostly performed trans actional leadership style 11 8) while they performed laissez-faire leadership style the least 6 20) Table 8 shows the results of the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs of administrators and their leadership style.The level of administrators' s elf-efficacy beliefs were significantly and positively related wi th transformational leadership s tyle (r= .610;p<.01), and with trans actional leadership style i n a medi um level (r= .373;p<.01).There is no significant relationship between the level of administrators' self-efficacy beliefs and laissez-faire leadership style.

Discussion and Conclusion
The level of administrators' self-efficacy beliefs and thei r leadership style is pretty much significant for the efficiency of the educational administration.As states make revisions in thei r educational systems in order to train youth for rapid technological changes and increasing economic and social problem, the school administrators should also undergo a change.Today, administrators are expected to develop teachi ng and learning more than before (Fisher, 2014).Apart from being a school administrator, they are also expected to be an educational visionary, instruction and program leader, evaluation and discipline expert, efficient managers, a budget expert, institutional manager, public relation specialist, legal procedures specialist, moreov er be sensitive to social collaboration and students' needs.School administrators are expected to have a hi gh l evel of belief that s/he can perform all those roles listed above and to have leadership skills to make transformations needed.The current research concluded that sc hool administrators have a high level of self-efficacy beliefs and adopt transformational leadership style most.
Administrator's self -efficacy is the belief for how s /he affects the student's success, and it is a critical factor in administrator's real performance (Lyons&Murphy, 1994).An important result of the current research is that school administrators have a hi gh level of self-efficacy beliefs.In related literature, there is some research supporti ng this result (Okutan&Kahveci, 2012;Ata, 2015;Koybasi, 2017;Acat et al., 2011;Demirtas &Caglar, 2012), and some do not (Sagri, et al., 2010).O ne of the possible outcomes of s elf-efficacy belief of an individual is its effect on the performance.According to Bandura (1977), perceived self-efficacy is "…proved to be a better predictor of behavior toward unfamiliar threats than did past performance p 211)" Hysong and Quiñones 199 ) and Judge and Bono 2001) associated selfefficacy to the job performance Moreover, Hysong and Quiñones 199 ) stated tha t as for complex or unclear tasks, self-efficacy is an important predictor of the performance.In a similar way, Wood and Bandura (1989) also associated efficacy with the performance by asserting that perceived self-efficacy beliefs for organizational performance affect the managers' success both directly or indirectly.
There is no significant difference in the self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators in terms of gender variable.Male and female administrators have similar s elf-efficacy perceptions.Moreov er, administrators working in different schools and have different seniority have similar perceptions of their s elf-efficacy also.There is a body of res earch having similar findings in terms of seniority (Lyons & Murphy, 1994;Williams, 2012;Isik&Gumus , 2017;Demi rtas &Caglar, 2012;Koybasi, 2017).However, Acat and others (2011) found that as the age and seniority increase, self -efficacy beliefs also increase.Furthermore, Santamaria ( 2008) concluded that age and seniority are two of the important predictors of selfefficacy belief.As a striking finding by Fisher (2014), the level of self-efficacy belief is at its top point in the first year of an administrator job.As the experience advanced, self-efficacy levels decrease.The lev el of self-efficacy beliefs begi ns to increase after ten years of experience, nevertheless not at the level of as it was in the first year.
Koybasi ( 2017) conducted a study on school level of the administrators and found that there was no significant difference in admi nistrato rs' self-efficacy beliefs accordi ng to the school they are worki ng in.On the other hand, Santamaria (2008) stated that as the school level increases, administrators' sense of self-efficacy beliefs gets higher also.There was no significant rel ationshi p between the self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators in terms of their educational level.Negis-Isik and Gumus (2017), and Demirtas and Caglar (2012) also reached similar findings, howev er, Acat et al. (2011) found that administrators having a two-y ear degree have a higher l evel of self-efficacy beliefs than the others.Indeed, self-efficacy belief is determined by the individual's success and failure, others' experi ences, deep emotional experiences such as excitement, happiness, and fear (Akkoyunlu&Orhan, 2003).Put differently, self-efficacy is a context-based concept (Tschannen-Moran&Gareis, 2004).That's to say, an administrator might feel efficient in one situation but inefficient for another given task.In this sense, self -efficacy belief is a changeable factor and might vary or not vary in different kind of situations.
Another important finding of the research is that school administrators adopt transformational leadership the most.They perform transactional and laissez-fai re leadership style res pectively.Related research reached similar findings (Avci 2015;Ozkan, Alev, Ercan 2015;Dasci 2014;Maral 2016;Tura 2012;Oguz, 2011;Toremen&Yas an, 2010;Wahap et al., 2014;Cemaloglu 2007;Cemaloglu, Sezgi n&Kilinc, 2012).Considering that transformational leaders take pl ace an important role in educational institutions which have the res ponsibility to adapt the rapid changes, it is a promising result that administrators perceive themselves as transformational.
Research fi ndings revealed that administrators' self-efficacy beliefs and leadership s tyles are related to each other.Leadership is effective on unders tanding the situations for the followers, selecting the goals, organizing the activities in order to reach the goals, motivating the followers, pursui ng collaboration and teamwork, and providing support and collaboration from outside the ins titution (Lei thwood, et al., 2004).Associated with being a successful leader, these properties such as patience, goal-oriented and problem solving (McCormick, 2001) are also required to be performed by individuals having a high level of self-efficacy.
It is striking that there is a positive rel ationshi p between the administrators' self-efficacy beliefs and the transformational and trans actional leadership styles they perform.Put differently, administrators having a hi gh level of self-efficacy beliefs might perform transformational and trans actional leadership s tyles or vice v ersa.In a similar study by Sigri, Tabak, and Gungor (2010), there are significant differences between the transformational leadership styles levels of the administrators having a high and low level of self-efficacy beliefs.Furthermore, self-efficacy was found to affect transformational leadership.
The similarity of the relationship between self-efficacy and these two ki nds of leadership styles mi ght be rooted i n their complementary characteristics.As Burns (1978) indicated, the leadership process can occur either in a transactional or transformational way (Cited in Bass&Waldman, 1987).According to Bass (1985;cited in Lowe, Kroeck&Sivasubramaniam, 1996), a transformational leader is possibly ineffective without performing a trans actional leadership style so an administrator may perform the two of the styles.
The administrators having a hi gh lev el of self-efficacy beliefs towards the administration process might perform transformational leaders hip style based on this belief.Osterman and Sullivan (1996) indicate that administrators with a high lev el of self-efficacy belief are also successful role models.Moreover, Lyons and Murpy (1994) s tated that they prefer to use their personal power resources rather than politics, procedures or legal regulations in order to influence the teachers.Considering the dimension of "inspi rational motivation" of tra nsformational leadership and to the extent that leadership behaviors motivating the followers in terms of the goals, Osterman and Sullivan (1996) s tated that selfefficient administrators tend to make an effort to reach the goals even in hard conditions.Furthermore, they might affect task performance, motivation level and self-development efforts in school (Schultz&Schultz, 1998); play an important role on the reconstruction of the schools (Dimmock&Hattie, 1996); influence how the teachers teach better and the learners learn better (Smith, Strom&Adams, 2006).Withi n the context of "intellectual stimulation" dimension of the transformational leadership, many res earchers indicated that there is a positive relationship between the administrators' s elf-efficacy beliefs enabling the followers to be innovative and creative and their perceived transformational leadership behaviors (Walumbwa, Lawler, Avolio, Wang and Shi, 2005;Walumbwa, Avolio and Zhu, 2008;Schyns, 2004;Schyns, 200;Nielson, Yarker, Randall and M unir, 2009).What's more, Schyns (2004) asserted leaders might also influence their followers' self-efficacy beliefs by giving an opportunity for their experiences, and by being a role model.As for the "individualized consideration" dimension of the trans formational leadership, self-efficacy mediates the behavior of busying with the task emergi ng when the follower emotionally connected to others to find a meaning in the work or/and s/he is cognitively aware (Luthans&Peterson, 2002).Leadership self -efficacy is related to gaining the attachment of the followers besides determining the direction and coping with the obstacles to the changes (Paglis&Green, 2002).Administrators having a low level of self-efficacy beliefs are i n a rush to identify themselves as unsuccessful and feel anxiety, stress, and disappointment (Tschannen-Moran&Gareis, 2004).Let alone, thes e behaviors are so far from the individualized consideration of the teachers.All these studies associated with the sub -dimensions of transformational leadership support the relationship found in the current research.In other words, self-efficacy beliefs of the administrator and his/her transformational leadership style are two of the complementary phenomena.

Suggestions
Apart from the legal requirements for administrator selection, considering the self-efficacy beliefs in this process might contribute to the effectiveness of the desired feedbacks in the system.According to Hogan, Curphy, and Hogan (1994), through interviews and assessment centers, psychologists have gathered data about the cogni tive abilities and personality of the leaders.Nevertheless, many of the organizations do not prefer this kind of information centers or they are unaware of their presence.Thus, technical qualities become a bas e for the s taff s election rather than the leadership skills.
Although the lev el of self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators are high in the current research, i t should be considered that self-efficacy can be a changeable concept and it can vary based on the conditions.The s uccessful experiences of the administrators might affect their self-efficacy positively while thei r failure might not.Airol a, Bengtson, Davis and Peer (2014) asserted that when people get training for leadership capacity, an increase arises in the level self-efficacy beliefs.In other words, an education of leadershi p might positively influence the self-efficacy, therefore not only in preparation programs but also in the admi nistration process, programs including especially transformational leadership behaviors and atti tudes will increase the capacity or leadership and lev els of self -efficacy.Besides, if such programs include experiences, role making/drama activities, and also positive persuading messages, they will contribute to improving the sense of self-efficacy more (Gist&Mitchell, 1992).
According to a study conducted by Calisir (2008), the school admi nistrators encounter with some obstacles such as inefficient sources, the responsibility of the authority, the intervention of the superiors, limitations of legal regulations and uncertain situations during the management process.These kinds of problems might affect the self -efficacy of the administrators negatively.Thus, psychological conditions at schools might be improved to increase the level of selfefficacy beliefs.

Limitations
Apart from all its significant findings, the current s tudy should be evaluated with i ts limitations; one of which is that the administrators' comments on their self-efficacy perceptions.However, self-efficacy beliefs are bas ed on a person's perception of ability rather than the ability s/he has.Either high or low, information on self -efficacy beliefs provides critical data for the researchers to understand the organizations better (Williams 2012).Thus, administrator selfefficacy might be studied related with some vari ables which are important for school effectiveness (teacher and student motivation, student achi evement, organizational commitment, organizational support, etc.) or with different institutions (special schools, pre-school ins titutions, colleges).Comparative research might be carried out wi th other shareholders of the school (teachers, staff, parents, etc) in which they evaluate the administrator's self -efficacy beliefs in order to understand the issue more deeply.Furthermore, besides the self-efficacy beliefs towards administration, general self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators might be investi gated also.Besides, the self-efficacy beliefs of the administrators, leadership styles, and thei r relations hip might be investi gated via mixed method approaches which both quantitative and qualitative methods are used.

Table 1 .
Sample characteristics

Table 2 .
Table 2 displays the comparative results of reliability and factor analysis of the scale by Negis-Isik and Derinbay (2015), and for this research.Reliability and Factor Analysis Results of Self-Efficacy Scale

Table 3 .
Reliability and Factor Analysis Results of Leadership Style Scale Table 4 displays the arithmetic mean and standard deviation res ults which show the levels of administrators' selfefficacy beliefs.

Table 5 .
Comparison of self-efficacy beliefs according to gender variable

Table 6 .
Comparison of self-efficacy beliefs according to the administrators' properties

Table 7 .
Leadership Styles Performed by the Administrators

Table 8 .
The Relationship betweenSelf-efficacy and Leadership Style (Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis)