Who is Motivated to Become a Leader and Shape the Landscape? Personal and Situational Factors Influencing Teachers to Seek Educational Leadership ...
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Who is Motivated to Become a Leader and Shape the
Landscape? Personal and Situational Factors Influencing
Teachers to Seek Educational Leadership Positions.
Anna Kanape-Willingshofer
Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria
Human behaviour is influenced by personal as well as situational factors. When investigating
which factors influence teachers aspirations to apply for the post of a school principal, the
person of the teacher as well as the context he/she finds himself/herself in (and also his/her
perception of these situational variables) must be taken into account. Data obtained from a
questionnaire administered to 361 Austrian teachers show personality profiles typical of
leaders in those who might apply in the future. While they are more interested in all school-
leader related tasks, their vocational interest profile shows high conventional rather than
investigative interests as expected by literature. While personal variables can only explain a
small proportion of why teachers want to apply for school principals jobs, adding their
estimations of the context increases the explained variance pronouncedly. Implications are
discussed with regard to lessen future principal shortages.
1When we ask whether leaders have an impact on the ‘landscape’ of a school, we must also
take into account who the future leaders will be. In many countries educational principalship
is „in a state of crisis” (Davis et al., 2005, p. 3) due to high turnover rates and a lack of
(suitable) applicants (Beteille, Kalogrides & Loeb, 2011). Beteille et al. (2011) showed
detrimental effects of high principal turnover rates on student performance as well as on
securing adequate leadership successors. Although the issue of principals leaving their
schools prematurely is more prominently discussed and researched in English-speaking
countries (e.g. Lacey, 2001, on problems with recruiting and retaining principals), concerns
have recently also arisen in low accountability countries.
In Austria, as one of these low accountability countries, however, there are additional
demographical reasons for a shortage: Analyses by Vogtenhuber et al. (2012) show that
more than two thirds of the Austrian principals will retire by 2020 - which will not relieve
present problems of finding suitable successors.
Becoming a school principal in Austria is only possible for teachers with permanent
contracts and some work experience as a teacher. There is no unified body for principal
selection and appointment; the constitution of the recruitment board as well as the criteria
used may differ from province to province. Future school principals are not prepared before
they start with their new work, but participate in a principal training programme within two
years after appointment. In 2013 the ministry for the first time commissioned three pre-
service Master programmes in school management. When the Austrian system of school
leadership is compared to others, it may also be significant to note that there is usually little
administrative staff in a school; schools can still be quite small with primary schools
sometimes consisting of only one or two classes. Whether schools have support staff such
as secretaries or administrators depends on the school size and school type; it is however,
not uncommon that in smaller schools principals and teachers fulfil all administrative and
organisational roles themselves.
Increasing responsibilities for Austrian school leaders may partly be ascribed to a
change regarding autonomy in the Austrian school system. Altrichter and Heinrich (2007)
describe three phases of school modernisation in Austria, with an initial phase focussing on
increased school autonomy in the early 1990s. This was followed by measures to strengthen
internal governance of schools; e.g. legal provisions to enable self-evaluation and quality
management of schools were established. The disappointing results of the first international
large scale assessments of students’ abilities (TIMSS in 1995 and PISA in 2000) triggered a
call for stronger external governance of schools. This has, ultimately, led to the recent
introduction of performance standards and centrally administered tests to monitor the
attainment of the standards. It should be noted that Austrian standard performance tests are
certainly intended as low-stakes testing (cf. also Altrichter & Kanape-Willingshofer, 2012 for a
2detailed discussion) and remain without consequences for individual pupils, teachers,
principals or schools.
While Austria is internationally regarded as a low accountability country by
researchers (cf. also Kanape-Willingshofer, Kemethofer & Altrichter, in press), Austrian
teachers and school principals view this somewhat differently as can be seen in Figure 1.
The figure shows that even if international comparisons of educational systems regarding
accountability pressure see Austria as one with low accountability, teachers and principals
within the Austrian system perceive high accountability pressure. This perceived pressure
might contribute to low leadership aspirations. Only because accountability pressure in
Austria is – in comparison to other systems – rated as low by researchers, does not mean
that the subjectively perceived pressure may not impact negatively on teachers’ motivation to
apply for principalship.
"School principals in Austria have high
accountability pressure."
60%
50%
40%
30% teachers
principals
20%
10%
0%
totally rather neither nor rather totally
disagree disagree agree agree
Figure 1: Perceived accountability pressure of school principals in Austria (nt= 352 teachers;
np= 499 principals, data from study which will be discussed in detail below).
These developments show that the role of a school principal has changed in the last decades
due to school modernisation and reforms of the Austrian educational system and the job has
certainly not become any easier. However, it is still unclear whether the context teachers and
principals find themselves in, is the main reason for the increasing shortage of applicants.
Research in other education systems has revealed a number of aspects which can impact
leadership aspirations of teachers. Teachers have lower school leadership aspirations if they
perceive principalship as a rather administrative job (Bezzina, 2010), but are interested in
doing educational work (Draper & McMichael, 2003; Lacey, 2002; Schmich & Breit, 2010) or
prefer classroom teaching (Smith, 2011). Cranston (2007) found a negative correlation of
teacher job satisfaction and their aspirations of principalship, as satisfied teachers do not
wish to change their present status if they are happy with their job.
3Being a school principal is often perceived as a very stressful job requiring working
overtime. This might have adverse consequences on work life balance or on family time
which constitutes a disincentive for many teachers (James & Whiting, 1998; Pounder et al.,
2003; van Cooley & Shen, 2000). Also the perceived (un)fairness of the selection process
has been discussed as a factor which deters teachers from applying for school principalship
(McLay, 2008; Neidhart & Carlin, 2003; Oplatka & Tamir, 2009). In German studies, higher
salary of principals was mentioned as a reason by teachers who have applied for school
principalship (Neulinger, 1990; Storath 1995; Wissinger, 1994). This, however, must be
contrasted with results from Neidhart & Carlin (2003) and Draper and McMichael (2003) who
found that teachers think that the principals’ additional pay does not compensate for the extra
work and responsibilities he or she has to put in.
The aim of the present study is to identify personal as well as situational factors which
influence people’s intention to take over a leadership position in school as a person’s
behaviour can be seen a function of personal traits and situational characteristics (Mischel,
1977). While the trait approach of personality has seen a revival in psychological leadership
research due to enhanced methodological approaches and inclusion of moderating variables
in explaining why findings only occur in specific situations, this perspective is still strongly
neglected in educational leadership research. A recent book chapter by Kanape-
Willingshofer and Bergner (in press) provides an overview of relevant meta-analytic findings
of traits and their impact on leadership outcome variables. In addition they discuss
educational leadership research that includes individual traits such as personality, cognitive
or emotional intelligence as well as creativity as independent variables. However, for the
dependent variable which is focussed upon in this paper, namely school leadership
aspirations, personality aspects and interests of teachers are put into the foreground.
A theoretical framework for the research described in this paper is provided by Judge
and Long (2012) who proposed a model including personality traits, motivation to lead,
contextual aspects as influential factors for leadership outcome variables (see Figure 1).
4Figure 1: Framework of personal and situational variables influencing school leadership
aspirations (adapted from Judge & Long, 2012; variables in grey are not featured in the present
study)
2. METHOD
2.1. Participants
The sample used in the present analysis consists of a subsample from the Educational
Leadership Motivation (ELMo) project. The subsample is made up of 361 Austrian teachers,
who were on average 45 years old (M = 45.35, SD = 9.62) and had 21 years of teaching
experience (M = 21.09, SD = 10.80). Seventy per cent of the participants were female and
they worked mainly in primary (30%), lower secondary (‘Hauptschulen’ or ‘Neue
Mittelschulen’, 30%), higher vocational (20%) and academic secondary schools
(‘Gymnasium’, 10%). The majority worked in public schools, with only 26 respondents in
private schools (three of those in non-confessional private schools, the rest in confessional
private schools).
2.2. Instruments and Procedure
An online questionnaire was created in Limesurvey which included personal demographic
data as well as school-specific data (see 2.1.) as background variables. In addition,
5respondents were asked to give judgements of agreement or disagreement (mainly on a 5-
point Likert scale) of school leadership-related statements (e.g. “The selection procedure for
school principals is fair and transparent” or “Being a school principal has more advantages
than disadvantages”). If participants did not want to proceed with a longer version of the
questionnaire, these were the only data they provided, which took them between 10-15
minutes.
An optional part of the questionnaire included the psychological constructs described
below. Completion of that section took on average 30 minutes. Participants received a
personality profile of the measured psychological constructs in exchange for participating in
the longer questionnaire. As all of the measurements used for the personality traits have
been published and tested elsewhere, only short descriptions of the concepts are provided
below. Permissions to contact the schools were obtained from the Austrian Federal Ministry
of and the Educational Boards of the Austrian provinces. Different types of schools across
Austria were then contacted by e-mail and principals as well as teachers were invited to
participate in the survey. As teachers’ contact details are not recorded centrally, principals
were asked to make their colleagues aware of the survey and forward the necessary
information to them.
The so-called Big Five personality traits (Openness, Extraversion, Emotional Stability,
Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) are the most prominently employed personality
measure in psychological research. They have been shown to predict job performance
(Schmidt & Hunter, 1998) and to correlate with leadership success (Judge et al., 2002). For
this study a German translation of the Big Five Inventory-22 by Rammstedt and John (2005)
was used which contains four items for each of the five personality traits. Although this
inventory showed the lowest reliabilities in this study, they can still be regarded as
acceptable (Cronbach’s α between .58 for agreeableness and .77 for extraversion).
In addition to these five ‘bright traits’ of personality also narcissism, one of the three
‘dark’ traits of personality (narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychoticism), was measured. A
German version of Raskin and Terry‘s (1988) Narcissism Personality Inventory which
consists of 15 items and showed satisfactory reliability (Cronbach α = .73) was used.
Participants general leadership motivation was assessed with a German Leadership
Motivation Inventory (‘Führungsmotivationsinventar’) by Felfe, Elprana, Gatzka and Stiehl
(2012) which includes past leadership experiences, leadership avoidance, as well as three
leader motives, affective leadership motive (α = .87), calculative leadership motive (α = .88)
and normative leadership motive (α = .76). In addition, the questionnaire also measures
three basic needs, namely need for power (α =.85), need for achievement (α = .80) and need
for affiliation (α = .75). The inventory is based upon Motivation to Lead Theories by
McClelland (1975) and Chan & Drasgow (2001).
6The six interest factors, Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and
Conventional interest as described by John Holland’s (1973) Model of Vocational Interest,
were assessed with the ‘Allgemeiner-Interessen-Struktur-Test’ (General Interest Structure
Test) by Bergmann and Eder (2005). The reliabilities for the scales were all highly
satisfactory (Cronbach α between .75 for social interest and .89 for realistic interests). In
addition to these general vocational interests, also school-leadership specific ones were
assessed with the ISM, an inventory testing seven areas of interests in school management
(conflict management, representation, human resource management, school development,
evaluation, further education and administration). The inventory was created by Krammer,
Huber, Demarle-Meusel and Mayr (2012) with an Austrian norm sample and showed
satisfactory reliabilities (Cronbach α between .67 and .80).
3. RESULTS
The results are based on analyses conducted with a subsample of 361 Austrian teachers
from data collected in the Educational Leadership Motivation project. The two research
questions which will be discussed below are:
In what variables do teachers who are motivated to lead differ from those who do not
want to take on leadership responsibilities?
Do situational aspects have additional explanatory power over personal ones, when
predicting school leadership aspirations?
The following sections describe results obtained for these analyses.
3.1. Differences between high and low leadership motivated teachers
To analyse the impact of leadership motivation two extreme groups were made based on
their answers to the item “I will apply for principalship in the next few years” (Frequency
distributions are shown in Figure 2).
7I will apply for school leadership in the next few years.
250 236
200
Frequencies
150
100
50
50 31 30
14
0
totally rather neither agree rather agree totally agree
disagree disagree nor disagree
Figure 2: Aspirations of teachers to apply for school leadership (N = 361)
Teachers who were undecided were excluded from further analyses for the comparison of
extremes and, thus a group of 283 teachers with low motivation to apply for leadership (i.e.
they answered “I totally disagree” or “I rather disagree”) could be compared to a group of 44
teachers who reported intentions to apply for principalship (“I totally agree” or “I rather
agree”). The distribution of leadership aspirations among teachers is similar if they are asked
whether they will apply for principalship at some point in the future which shows that the
responses are quite independent of item formulation. Table 1 shows the results of
independent t-tests calculated between the two extreme groups as well as the respective
effect size measured by Cohen’s d.
Low M High M
t df Sig. d
(SD) (SD)
Interest in Representing (ISM) 9.611 108.175 .000 3.20 (.93) 4.34 (.54) .85
Interest in School Development (ISM) -8.207 91.712 .000 3.78 (.62) 4.48 (.42) 1.71
Conventional interests (RIASEC) -5.176 76.294 .000 2.98 (.75) 3.58 (.60) 1.19
Enterprising interests (RIASEC) -6.919 169 .000 3.25 (.74) 4.12 (.50) 1.06
Interest in Evaluation (ISM) -5.657 169 .000 3.34 (.74) 4.09 (.62) 0.87
Interest in Human Res. Man. (ISM) -5.060 169 .000 3.45 (.66) 4.03 (.52) 0.78
Interest in Conflict Management (ISM) -3.174 90.600 .002 3.98 (.73) 4.30 (.50) 0.67
Interest in Further Education (ISM) -4.308 169 .000 3.96 (.65) 4.45 (.48) 0.66
Interest in Administration (ISM) -3.879 169 .000 2.62 (.81) 3.18 (.78) 0.60
Social interests (RIASEC) -2.605 170 .010 3.82 (.57) 4.08 (.44) 0.40
Table 1: Differences in interests between high and low leadership aspiring teachers
Table 1 shows that teachers with stronger leadership aspirations also have stronger interests
in all of the seven school leadership-related interests assessed by the ISM. While this might
be expected, it is interesting to note that strong effects according to Cohen (1988, i.e. with d
8> .80) can be found with regard to representing and developing the school (d=1.85 and
d=1.71, respectively) as well as dealing with evaluation issues (d=.87).
With respect to their general vocational interests teachers with leadership motivation
differ from their colleagues in that they have far stronger conventional (d=1.19) and
enterprising (d=1.06) interests, and that they are slightly more interested in taking over social
tasks in their work (d=.40).
Low M High M
t df Sig. d
(SD) (SD)
Self/Leader personality overlap -9.143 109.439 .000 3.33 (.84) 4.10 (.41) 1.75
Affective Leadership Motive -8.146 114.042 .000 3.12 (.88) 4.02 (.49) 1.53
Leadership Avoidance 6.314 74.696 .000 2.75 (1.02) 1.75 (.80) 1.46
Conditional Leadership Motive 4.904 168 .000 2.99 (.93) 2.18 (.80) 0.76
Avoidance of Failure 3.695 102.418 .000 1.94 (.78) 1.56 (.48) 0.73
Striving for Influence -3.397 88.182 .001 3.26 (.84) 3.67 (.59) 0.72
Avoidance of Loss of Control 4.243 169 .000 2.29 (.83) 1.68 (.63) 0.65
Striving for Success -2.747 90.037 .007 3.64 (.66) 3.89 (.45) 0.58
Leader-like Experiences -4.046 328 .000 2.36 (1.99) 3.68 (2.14) 0.45
Avoidance of Rejection 2.356 169 .020 1.94 (.78) 1.62 (.67) 0.36
Table 2: Differences in leadership motives between high and low leadership aspiring teachers
With regard to the motives which lie behinds people’s aspirations to take over leadership
roles in general and their leadership related experiences, a rather typical leader profile
emerges. Teachers with strong aspirations to apply for a leadership position in a school see
their own personality as more strongly similar to that of a leader (d=1.75); they report taking
over leadership activities because they experience more pleasure from it (affective
leadership motive, d=1.53) and do engage less in these activities compared to others
because they expect something in return (conditional leadership motive, d=.76).
In addition, potential future school leaders show a moderately stronger power motive
(more Striving for Influence, d=.72, and less Avoidance of Loss of Control, d=.65) and a
moderately stronger achievement motive (less Avoidance of Failure, d=.73, and more
Striving for Success, d=.58). While the two groups do not differ in their wish to be accepted
by others, the analysis shows that teachers wanting to become principals do not mind being
rejected by others as strongly as those who do not want to become teachers (d=.36).
Finally, it can be seen from Table 2 that those teachers who wish to apply for school
leadership in future have been ‘leaders’ all along: they report more leader-like experiences in
the past (e.g. being group leader in the scouts, class representative is school, or leading a
clique in kindergarten, d=.45) and less avoidance of taking over leading tasks or engaging in
leadership also outside of work settings (d=1.46).
9t df Sig. Low M (SD) High M (SD) d
Narcissism -5.586 82.208 .000 0.33 (.20) 0.50 (.15) 1.23
Emotional Stability -4.334 94.154 .000 2.45 (.83) 2.94 (.55) 0.89
Job satisfaction -2.789 65.496 .007 5.41 (1.52) 5.98 (1.19) 0.69
Additional requirements of SL -5.759 325 .000 .89 (.36) 1.23 (.34) 0.64
Age 2.345 67.297 .022 46.08 (10.05) 43.07 (7.47) 0.57
Extraversion -3.579 169 .000 3.83 (.75) 4.30 (.64) 0.55
Conscientiousness -3.191 169 .002 4.25 (.49) 4.58 (.60) 0.49
Job values: challenge -2.785 327 .006 5.90 (.72) 6.24 (.94) 0.31
Table 3: Differences in personality, demographics, job satisfaction, and values between high
and low leadership aspiring teachers
Regarding trait personality variables, the study reveals that teachers with stronger intentions
of leading a school also have higher emotional stability (d=.89), are more extraverted
(d=.55), and more conscientious (d=.49). The most pronounced difference between the two
groups can be observed with regard to their ratings in narcissism, where potential leaders
score significantly higher than their counterparts not interested in leadership (d=1.23).
Teachers motivated to take on school principalship report moderately higher job
satisfaction (d=.69) and they have so far fulfilled more of the additional requirements that
give them an advantage in the application process, e.g. further studies, participation in
teacher education etc. (d=.64). A challenging job was more important to the leadership
aspiring teachers (d=.31), but then they were also significantly younger than those not
interested in becoming a school principal (d=.57).
3.2. Impact of Personal and Situational Factors on Leadership Aspirations
When investigating the influence of personal and situational factors on people’s behaviour, it
is also interesting to see to which extent this behaviour is predicted solely by one or the
other.
10Step β ΔR2
1 PERSONAL ASPECTS 0.154**
affective leadership motive 0.26**
Self/Leader personality overlap 0.18**
2 PERSONAL & SITUATIVE ASPECTS 0.467**
Advantages of principalship dominate 0.46**
Belonging to political parties plays role in selection -0.14**
Leading is a male role -0.10**
Remuneration for principalship is not adequate 0.10**
Principals work more than 40 hrs/week 0.09**
Males as preferred in the application process -0.08**
Principalship is rather organisational than educational work -0.07**
Principals have high work satisfaction 0.07*
Table 3: Stepwise hierarchical regression analysis with personality (Big Five, Narcissism),
Interests (ISM and RIASEC) and leadership motives entered in the first step and situative
2 2
variables added in a second step. β = standardized Beta weights; ΔR = corrected R ; **=
significant at p4. DISCUSSION
The present study showed differences between teachers with high or low school
leadership motivation in a number of personal and situational variables. Those who see their
personality as more similar to that of a leader are more likely to apply, and also their
personality profiles seem to back this up. Similar to successful leaders in other contexts (e.g.
Judge et al., 2002), potential school leaders in this study were also outgoing and very
thorough in their work. Their much higher emotional stability is certainly of no disadvantage
in a job as stressful as this one. Aspiring future school leaders also showed a stronger
Leadership Motive Pattern (McClelland, 1975) with a high motive to influence others, high
achievement motive and low affiliation motive. This Leadership Motive Pattern has also
predicted high leadership success in other research (McClelland, 1975). Especially that a
“top manager’s need for power ought to be greater than his need for being liked by people”
(McClelland and Burnham, 1975, p. 101) is an interesting aspect when speaking of school
principals.
The vocational interests of the teacher with high leadership aspirations seem to
reflect those tasks that principals in Austria are often seen to be mainly engaged in.
According to Gottfredson and Holland (1996) S-E-I (reflecting high social, high enterprising
and high investigative interests) would be the interest structure for a school principal. The
fact that principalship in Austria is seen as a highly administrative job, often strongly
focussing on management rather than leadership aspects (Schmich & Breit, 2009) also
seems to reflect in future leaders’ more conventional interests. This aspect must be
discussed from two angles: One the one hand it could mean that teachers with high
investigative interests are not interested in becoming school principals in Austria, as this
position may offer them few chances to act out their interests. On the other hand this may
also impact future school leadership in Austria, if self-selection makes those with high
conventional interests apply for leadership positions, but not those with strong investigative
and scientific ones. If we think of future leaders shaping the landscape and take into account
how much educational systems and school principals’ tasks have changed, a great need for
future leaders with strong ambitions to investigate relationships and connections and maybe
even contribute rather unconventional ideas can be seen, compared to people who feel at
home in highly structured settings and tend to avoid unclear situations and problems (cf.
Holland, 1997).
The study, however, could also show that personality, interests and leadership
motives do not predict whether someone applies for principalship or not. Here, situational
aspects and especially the personal interpretation of the contextual variables have a much
stronger predictive value. It has also been shown in psychological leadership research, that
personality variables mainly predict leadership success in situations where a leader has
12much freedom of decision (Ng, Ang & Chan, 2008). The restricted autonomy that school
leaders in Austria perceive (Schmich & Breit, 2009) would also raise the question how useful
personality variables are to predict leadership aspirations or outcomes in such a setting with
low autonomy.
Special attention must be given to teachers’ assessment of the school principals’
remuneration and working hours, which are often seen as major reasons for the present
principal shortage (cf. Pounder & Merrill, 2001). We can see from the analyses in this paper
that teachers with high or low school leadership motivation do not differ significantly in their
assessment of these two variables. However, a strong motivation to apply for school
leadership is at the same time influenced by thinking that payment is not adequate and that
principals have to work more than the regular weekly work time. This could mean that people
who want to be principals are not wearing rose-coloured glasses overlooking poor
remuneration and long working hours, but that they want to shape the landscape as a school
leader badly enough to be willing to apply even under these situational circumstances.
This result would, in turn, also mean that the principal shortage cannot simply be
alleviated by paying Austrian principals more money or providing them with additional
support staff as those are not the key aspects keeping motivated people from the job. Still, it
can also by no means be argued that the present working conditions of principals are rosy
and that principals could easily do without additional administrative staff or financial rewards
for outstanding work (either for themselves, or their school). In addition, it is high time to
introduce some long term succession planning schemes to Austrian schools and provide
potential candidates with a preparatory training as is e.g. provided by the recently introduced
Master in School Management, which, however, again puts the management aspects of
leading a school into the limelight and does not recognize that leadership is far more than
management (or even clearly distinct from that). An interesting development which has been
put into practice by Stephan Huber and colleagues in Switzerland are workshops which
include job-shadowing and counselling for teachers who want to find out whether being a
principal could be the right job for them before actually applying.
A finding which contrasts Cranston’s (2007) argument that satisfied teachers do not
want to become principals can be provided by this study, as it was shown that those teachers
with higher motivation to apply for school leadership also have a higher job satisfaction.
Again, this result provides a streak of light at the horizon of the future educational landscape
in Austria. Becoming a leader of a school should by no means be seen as a way out for
unsatisfied teachers, but in order to bring change and improvement about, they have to be
strong characters with infectious energy.
13This positive outlook, however, is deeply troubled by a final finding which needs to be
discussed with regard to the present shortage of applicants for school leadership positions:
In the teachers’ perception the selection process is strongly influenced by party politics and
gender-biased. As has also been observed by Neidhart & Carlin (2003) such a perception
diminishes potential candidates’ motivation to apply.
300
250
200
Frequency
150
100
50
0
totally rather neither agree rather agree totally agree
disagree disagree nor disagree
Selection procedure is fair and transparent Most able applicant becomes SL
Figure 3: Frequencies of responses to two items related to selection fairness
Figure 3 shows the responses of a larger sample of teachers and school leaders from the
Educational Leadership Motivation Project with regard to two items, “The selection procedure
is fair and transparent” and “The most able applicant receives the job”. Even those who have
been appointed as school principals sometimes have no idea why they came out of the
selection process successfully. Thus, it is clearly high time to change this procedure. The
future application process, must not only be fair and unbiased, but it should also be made
applicant friendly and transparent if the Austrian educational system wants to have a good
pool of applicants submitting their documents for the selection procedure.
The study has shown some personal and situational factors which influence teachers’
school leadership motivation. However, it has also made clear that further research into
individual differences of potential candidates and the context they find themselves in, is
required. At least for the Austrian educational system it has clearly revealed that there is still
much work to be done to ensure that teachers will find an educational landscape in which
they actually want to play a role in shaping it as future school leaders.
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