The Relationship between Distributed Leadership and Work Self-Efficacy with the Mediating Role of Academic Optimism of the Teacher

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between distributed leadership and job self-efficacy with the mediating role of academic optimism of the teacher. This study is applied and correlation research based on structural equation modeling. 281 teachers of Zahedan city were selected using stratified random sampling. To collect information, three questionnaires were used: distributed leadership (Gholami, Sahranavard, & Azizi, 2014), job self-efficacy (Riggs & Knight, 1994) and teacher’s academic optimism (Beard, Hoy, & Woolfolk, 2010). For data analysis the Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated using SPSS and structural equation modeling was done using Lisrel software. Based on the results the direct effect of distributed leadership on job self-efficacy (β=0.33), the direct effect of distributed leadership on teacher’s academic optimism (β=0.76) and the direct effect of teacher’s academic optimism on job self-efficacy (β=0.42) was found to be significant. The indirect effect of distributed leadership on job self-efficacy was also found to be significant with the mediating role of organizational laziness (β=0.352). Therefore, it can be concluded that through applying a distributed leadership style in schools (with regard to trust-based leadership, a democratic climate, comprehensive support, and teachers’ professional development) the level of teachers’ academic optimism increases. With an increase in teachers’ academic optimism, their job performance can be expected to improve.