This study is aimed at investigating the structural relationship between the principal's
transformational leadership, school organization vitality climate, teacher efficacy and teacher's
job satisfaction using teacher data on the 2nd year of Gyeonggi Education Panel Study
(hereafter referred to as GEPS), and verifying if a research model can be equally applied to
groups through the difference verification of path coefficients by teacher's background
variable. 1220 teachers who responded to questionnaires on the second-year data of GEPS
were selected as the subjects in this study.
The analysis results are as follows. First, the principal's transformational leadership had a
significant impact on job satisfaction of teachers, and it had the most impact on school
organization vitality climate. Second, teacher efficacy showed both direct and meditating
effects between research variables, which indicates that the principal needs to devise a
financial support system and develop programs to enhance teacher efficacy, ultimately
increasing the job satisfaction of teachers. Third, intergroup structure invariance,
measurement invariance and partial scalar invariance were all satisfied. Latent mean
differences in teacher groups by gender revealed that male teachers had a higher degree of
awareness on the transformational leadership and teacher's job satisfaction. The latent mean
differences depending on the position showed that head teachers had a higher awareness of
the transformational leadership, school vitality climate and teacher's job satisfaction compared
to general teachers. Fourth, the path that represents a significant difference between male
and female teachers was not found with respect to teacher coefficients between teacher
groups. Path coefficient differences depending on the position also found that the influence
of transformational leadership on the school vitality climate was greater to the group of
head teachers, whereas that of school organization vitality climate on the teacher's job
satisfaction was significant only to the group of general teachers. In addition, the influence
of teacher efficacy on the job satisfaction was greater to the group of general teachers. These
findings suggest that the principal's leadership is not applied to the school members in the
same manner since there was a difference in the degree of influence and awareness on each
research variable according to background variables of teachers. Therefore, principles are
expected to take these points into account when they exert transformational leadership.