Abstract
This study deals with teachers’ perceptions of principals’ leadership style as it affects parental involvement (PI) in the special context of the Arab education system in Israel. Contemporary perceptions of education within the Western individualist society, including in the majority society in Israel, regard the full spectrum of PI, ranging from supervising homework to taking part in pedagogical decision-making, as very beneficial for children’s education and support it. Yet the social context of the Arab minority, which is both traditional and collectivist, may induce Arab teachers to different views. In this study we correlate the teachers’ PI perceptions with the leadership style of principals at their schools. We presented two kinds of Likert-type questionnaires to a sample of 200 Arab elementary school teachers. Our findings indicate that, contrary to what was expected, Arab teachers support PI as beneficial for the children’s education. When they perceive the principal as efficient, they tend to be rather reserved about pedagogical PI. If the principals are passive, teachers welcome PI. It is concluded that Arab teachers can serve as agents of change in their society toward more democratic values. There are limitations to the validity of such a conclusion for the whole population of the Arab teachers as this is their view in theory, not tested with actual behaviors.