Principals’ Instructional Leadership on Teachers’ Instructional Practices in Rural Primary Schools in Sirajganj, Bangladesh

In Bangladesh’s increasingly complex rural schools in Sirajganj district, there is a heightened focus on instructional leadership as a strategy for enhancing teachers’ instructional practices. This study employs Hallinger’s educational management and leadership framework to investigate the influence of principals’ instructional leadership on teachers’ instructional practices in rural Sirajganj District, Bangladesh. Hallinger’s framework emphasizes the principal’s responsibility in fostering collaboration with teachers to improve educational outcomes. The study adopted a descriptive quantitative design, utilizing two standardized survey instruments: the NETSA (National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators) survey for principals and the TAILS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) questionnaire for teachers. Fourteen principals and 175 teachers from 15 randomly selected rural schools in Sirajganj participated in the study. The research applied a range of statistical analyses using SPSS version 29.0, including ANOVA, independent-sample t-tests, correlation analysis, and descriptive statistics. These analyses assessed the association between principals’ instructional leadership and teachers’ instructional practices. Results indicated a significant positive relationship on teachers, as demonstrated by improvement in classroom management, assessment techniques, time allocation for instruction, and feedback provision. These findings extend prior research by offering a comprehensive perspective on the way principals’ instructional leadership shapes teachers’ psychological processes, instructional methods, and job satisfaction. However, the study is subject to certain limitations, including its sample size and the generalizability of the findings to other regions. To address this limitation, the study could suggest that future work replicate this study using mixed-methods or longitudinal approaches in other regions of Bangladesh.