Abstract

This quantitative study has been conducted to investigate the relationship between Elementary School Head Teachers' servant leadership style and their Self-Efficacy. The School heads (both males & females) working in the Public Elementary Schools of the District Lahore were the targeted population for this study. The sample of 312 head teachers was taken conveniently from the population. The head teachers' servant leadership styles and their Self-Efficacy were measured with the help of a close-ended questionnaire developed by the researcher(s). This was a five-point Likert rating scale comprised of 24 items for the Servant Leadership style and 19 items for Self-Efficacy. The collected data have been analyzed with the help of Pearson's r. It was concluded based on the results that a statistically significantly strong positive effect of Head Teachers' Servant Leadership Style was found on their Self-Efficacy.

Key Words

Elementary School, Head Teachers, Servant Leadership, Self-Efficacy

Introduction

Leadership is a method in which a person stimulates a team to meet the basic objective of the leader or communication. "John W. Gardner" Servant Leadership is a leadership ideology in which a person communicates with each other, either as a manager or as a co-worker, intending to gain power rather than authority (Wang et al., 2017). When you are on the front lines, it's good to be reminded of the end goal. "Trying to organize a set of people to attain a common purpose" is one concept of leadership. If you achieve your dreams, you must be a successful mentor, correct? It is not even similar. The above meaning of inclusive strategic leadership appeals to each other (Ali et al., 2023).

In an impression management system, one individual can engage the care and support of others to complete a common task. That definition portrays leadership as collaborating to finish a mission. Everybody is responsible. There is a more extraordinary force on teamwork and less emphasis on findings. I am not suggesting that findings are not important, but how you get there is. Furthermore, this is what gives rise to the Servant leadership model (Bao et al., 2018).

Servant leadership is defined as an educational point of view that prioritizes the desired goals, the needs of the organization, and the conditions of individuals through the leader's needs and desires (Kiker, 2019). Servant leadership quickly focuses on means pertaining in order to increase followers' ability for using new solutions and acquire different activities at the task. Such initiatives, on the other hand, may be perceived as efficient largely in setups in which followers' capacity and eagerness to exert action and guide their actions is valued (Wang et al., 2019).

Servant leaders listen to others, appreciate and assist others, and claim to be worried regarding one‘s requirements. Servant leadership believes a long-term objective can only be met by promoting the development and broad benefits of the individuals that make up these types of organizations (Crippen & Willows, 2019).

These are commonly distinguished as well as form some foundation for this study. Servant leadership is a leadership comprehension and practising that prioritizes those things that guided well the leader's self-interest (Babalola et al., 2017). Servant leadership encourages appreciating, constructing, and forming communities, as well as practising authenticity, supplying leadership for the advantage of guidance, and the ability to share power and prestige for the benefit of each individual, the organization overall, as well as delivered by the organization (Verdorfer, 2019).

Humbleness, relationship authority, customer orientation, supporter innovation, the inspiration of supporter independence, idealistic declaring, emotional growth, convincing charting, knowledge, and organizational governance are examples of servant leadership behaviours or attributes (Afaq et al., 2017). The benefits of servant leadership models include altruism, simplicity, and self-awareness. It emphasizes moral concern for others, reducing the complexity created by putting personal desires at odds with followers (Yadav & Kumar, 2019). 

Servant leaders have a specific concern for others, which frequently necessitates personal sacrifice. Servant leaders' actions are directed toward the benefit of others, even if those actions are counter to their interests. Furthermore, servant leadership influences employees' self-efficacy. Through three types of impudence, mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, and verbal persuasion, a principal as a servant leader can arrange the setting for creating self-efficacy in supporters (Babalola et al., 2017).

Literature Review

What is Leadership?

From a period of classical Greek philosophy, leadership is organizational management that is a well-known area of analysis. Since the 20th century proceeded, the topic of leadership displayed the view of intense research. Every policy and administration is composed of sub-organizations and leaders that are operating below the leadership. Sound leadership should develop from the arrangement of society, not from two or three fields at the top (Xu & Wang, 2019). Excellent leadership behaviours and styles have a distinct impact on people and attitudes. Through obvious composition, the most suitable leadership style is fair. Where profession and values are necessary for reliable discrimination, it is desirable to create efficient control of the democratic manner and style of leadership (Gedifew & Bitew, 2017).




Background

Although leadership is applicable in all situations and for all reasons, each organization requires its implementations and strategies regarding maximum efficacy. "Special leadership is required because schools are special places," as a result. A school's stakeholders have personal ties to both the declaration as well as the idea. As a consequence, teachers work hard for the good grades that teachers and students demand. Furthermore, many teachers are leaving the profession for a variety of reasons, either in or out of the education sector (Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara & Ruiz-Palomino, 2019).

The literature study will examine three sequential themes in education relevant to this study as an outcome. The first theme concerns the negative effects of teacher attrition on student achievement (Afaq et al., 2017). The second theme links the effects of leadership to the ultimate goal of higher student achievement. It will specifically examine the educational implications of quality instruction, teacher attrition, student achievement, leadership, and educational leadership, and conclude with an overarching examination of the third theme, servant leadership (Kiker, 2019).

Importance of Servant Leadership

Education in the 20th century has progressed further than rote memorization and books, with educators now anticipating general information rather than simply absorbing it. Throughout reality, "long-term education is not about remembering separate factual information, but about perfecting advanced functions that can be performed outside the existence of the instructor". Educators therefore must learn how to implement thoughts and knowledge via cooperative rationale, involvement, finding it difficult, and ability to reflect (Allen et al., 2018). As a result, most classroom leaders now serve as mediators and try to educate on their instructional travels (Ahmad & Dilshad, 2016).

Decades of research have demonstrated the importance of teachers in student achievement. Unfortunately, schools that enrol students with the greatest academic needs frequently have the least trained staff. As a result, instruction is weakest where it is most needed, and students frequently do not reach their full potential or achieve optimal academic achievement. Thus, improving teacher quality remains an elusive and difficult goal for education reformers (Amankwaa et al., 2019).

Despite differences in educational systems, expectations, and cultural ideologies worldwide, the classroom teacher remains critical to student success. Effective instruction has been, is, and will continue to be critical for successful student achievement and any society's future success (Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara & Ruiz-Palomino, 2019). For example, it was discovered that classroom factors account for more than one-third of students' academic achievement variance. Even more, telling, it was reported that the teacher accounted for 30% of the variance in student achievement. In the study of mathematics education in Ghana, 55 per cent of the variance in student achievement was recognized at the classroom level, while only 45 per cent was recognized at the student level (Bande et al., 2016).

Fortunately, changes in preservice teacher preparation have begun to prepare new educators better to meet the challenges of 21st-century learners. The new teachers were more effective at raising student achievement (Babalola et al., 2017). Nonetheless, it was discovered that when the supervising teacher and student teacher collaborated to differentiate instruction and meet individual student needs, individual student development was revealed through increased test scores. Additionally, those same supervising teachers reported a greater reflection of their efficiency (Wang et al., 2017).







Leadership Brief Overview

The above study looked at various kinds of leadership behaviour that have been studied in the past and are well established to varying degrees due to their prevalence in the literature: impactful, operational, and collaborative leadership. To investigate the effects of idealized influence, a substantial portion of the study has been carried out in various organizations (Crippen & Willows, 2019). These two leadership behaviours first appeared in the literature, and they differ significantly in their feature, characteristics, as well as the origin of better in time. According to many studies, these leadership behaviours should be regarded as parallel, to every required component of the other to achieve leadership success. Servant leadership emerged around the same time as leadership effectiveness, but it retains the econometric analysis backing that leadership does (Yadav & Kumar, 2019). Furthermore, as a good leadership model, servant leadership has struggled to establish itself as a real candidate in management literature. Servant leadership goes further than individuals selected with believers to concentrate profoundly on the follower's well-being to create unique abilities in both the leader and the follower. Following a great leadership style has traction in school systems other than spiritually oriented ones. Servant leadership also struggles with clarity and conceptualization due to the over 30 distinct characteristics identified in the literature (Xu & Wang, 2019).

It was looked into the work that looked into interpersonal confidence in education. Trust in students, according to a researcher's assessment of their job, is the interaction among reverence, professionalism, subjective appreciation, and truthfulness (Babalola et al., 2017). Such characteristics correlate to the 5 mediating variables: "generosity, stability, expertise, sincerity, and approachability.  When used in conjunction with principal supportive behaviour, such characteristics have been shown to decrease volatility and weakness in scenarios hiring foreign stress and pressure (Afaq et al., 2017).

What is Self-efficacy?

The teacher's position is already becoming highly complicated about social hierarchies trying to influence the headmaster's position. Classroom policy reforms require more participation from educational leadership behaviour, putting precepts at the centre of "self-efficacy and revision with an explicit objective assumption that they will perform" (Verdorfer, 2019). The larger preconceptions are now being assumed a function of the headmaster since few obligations are now being deleted. Murphy (1994) adds that as the involvement has become more ambiguous, sociopolitical requirements for the institution's complexity increase (Allen et al., 2018).

It was expanded on Murphy's assertion, stating that "the irony is that, as the start changing aspirations intensify (responsibility), the principalship on its own has become swamped in a manner that makes fulfilling the pledge of pervasive, prolonged restructuring extremely difficult". The three major groups have competing areas of influence (Bande et al., 2016). The first realm of impact is built into the duties and responsibilities of the school headmaster's contribution. The principal's obligations involve adhering to both state guidelines and school board guidelines and enjoying essential importance in the day-to-day processes of the college. Furthermore, leaders have a responsibility to fix the needs of local communities, concerned parents, and teachers. Eventually, leaders must contend with federal and state policy initiatives (Alafeshat & Tanova, 2019).

Such guidelines can "create incentives for activity" by allowing school heads to participate in judgment as a main facilitator. On the other side, laws have the power to expand another step of bureaucracy to the role of leadership if policy actors' priorities in life diverge. The modern school leader must navigate a tangled network of conflicting interests, requirements, and contradictory texts from numerous regional powers all over various parties (Chen et al., 2016).




Relation between Servant Leadership Style and Self-Efficacy

Leadership is an important symbol of ability and acceptance considering leaders assist explain positions and provide common guidance to agents. Servant leaders in that potential kind of leadership are enthused about providing students with opportunities to develop innovative abilities and encouraging them to complete their creative goals (Bao et al., 2018). Servant leaders essentially centre on the individual growth of their students by providing those ethics, which commence to more abilities and skills of students, and it enhances self-efficacy. Thus, in 2010, Cerit examined a personal relationship between self-efficacy and servant leadership (Zhu & Zhang, 2019).

Servant leadership has been widely investigated in the market circumstances, showing how it can happen in achieving business goals, flattering people's well-being, recognition, and greater self-efficacy of workers. Therefore based on the preceding discussion, the resulting project has been revealed. Self-efficacy can be described as personal beliefs about their experiences and abilities to strengthen and execute the development of the energy required to administrate a possible situation (Ali et al., 2023). Further particularly, by self-efficacy, personal firm confidence rises to achieve a critical job. Though the idea of Servant Leadership has been associated with active teachers in various subjects but self-efficacy part as a mediator has been overlooked in earlier investigations. Also, in 2014, Whitman conducted an investigation and observed that servant leadership has no meaningful influence on the self-efficacy of teachers; hence this investigation strives to investigate the impact of self-efficacy as a mediator to bondservant leadership and teaching effectiveness (Wheeler, 2012).




Objectives of the Research Study

The objective of the research was:

? To investigate the relationship between the Head Teachers' Servant Leadership Style with their Self-Efficacy.

Methodology

This quantitative study has been conducted to investigate the relationship between Elementary School Head Teachers' servant leadership style and their Self-Efficacy. The School heads (both males & females) working in the Public Elementary Schools of the District Lahore were the targeted population for this study. The sample of 312 head teachers was taken conveniently from the population. The head teachers' servant leadership styles and their Self-Efficacy were measured with the help of a close-ended questionnaire developed by the researcher(s). This was a five-point Likert rating scale comprised of 24 items for the Servant Leadership style and 19 items for Self-Efficacy. The psychometric validity of both questionnaires was ensured while taking the expert opinion. Similarly, both of these were pilot-tested before actual use. The Cronbach Alpha for the Servant Leadership Style Scale was .87 which was highly reliable. Similarly, Cronbachs Alpha for the Self-Efficacy Scale was .83 which was also highly reliable. The data was collected by the researcher(s) with the help of the aforementioned questionnaires. The collected data have been analyzed with the help of Pearsos r.




Analysis & Results

The data were evaluated and their central

tendency and dispersion were determined using descriptive statistics. In a manner similar to this, Pearson's r was used. The detail is as under:

Table 1

Gender	Frequency	Valid Percent
Female	123	39.4
Male	189	60.6
Total	312	100.0

 Table 1 shows that there were 312 School Heads including 123 female School Heads and 189 male school heads who participated in this study.

Table 2

Locality	Frequency	Valid Percent
Urban	226	72.4
Rural	86	27.6
Total	312	100.0

 Table 2 shows that there were 312 School Heads including 226 from Urban locality and 86 from Rural locality who participated in this study.

Table 3

	Teachers Anxiety	Teachers Performance
Teachers Anxiety	1	.83
Teachers Performance		1

 With an r-value of .83 and a p-value of less than 0.05, Table 2 shows a statistically significantly stronger positive correlation between School Heads Servant Leadership Style and their Self-Efficacy. 

Conclusion & Recommendations

The exceptional leadership of the School Heads guarantees the school's overall excellence. Based on the results, it is concluded that there is a strong and statistically significant relationship was found between the mean values of Servant Leadership and Head Teachers' Self-Efficacy. Based on the results, it is recommended that the School Heads should practice Servant Leadership so that their Self-Efficacy may be increased.

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