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How instructional leadership and creativity related factors shape students' reading performance: evidence from a
Nermin Er Aydemir1, Tuncer Fidan2
1Department of Turkish and Social Sciences Education, Faculty of Education, Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University, Alanya-Antalya, Türkiye.
Introduction:
This study aims to examine the influences of student-level creativity characteristics, school-level creativity-supportive conditions, and instructional leadership on reading performance.
Methods:
This study employed PISA 2022 data for Türkiye. A total of 7,250 students and 196 school principals' data were analyzed by employing multilevel path analysis and Bayesian estimation. Missing data were addressed through Full Information Maximum Likelihood. We reported model fit indices in path analysis to validate our model. We conducted convergence checks, posterior predictive checks, and sensitivity analyses, and reported pooled values for the number of free parameters, the observed and replicated chi-square statistics, and the posterior predictive p-value (PPP) to validate our model in Bayesian estimation.
Results:
Our results revealed that at the student level, the effect of creativity and openness to intellect on reading performance is mediated by curiosity and imagination. At the school level, none of the indirect effects of instructional leadership on reading performance-through a creative school environment, a culture of openness, or creative activities-were found to be significant. Another notable mechanism is that socioeconomic and cultural status (ESCS) has a direct and positive association with reading performance. While creativity, intellectual openness, and imagination are associated with socioeconomic status, curiosity seems to function as a relatively egalitarian internal source of motivation not shaped by socioeconomic advantage. The pattern at the school-level presents a notably different picture. Our school-level findings revealed that instructional leadership had a negative direct relationship with reading performance. Furthermore, the strong direct association of academic school selectivity with reading performance revealed that exam-focused school stratification in Turkey is the dominant structural factor determining achievement.
Discussion:
Overall, this study revealed that the reading performance of Turkish students is shaped not directly from individual traits such as creativity-openness to intellect, but through motivational-cognitive mechanisms such as curiosity and imagination. The insignificance of the indirect paths of instructional leadership on reading through creative processes indicates that interventions aimed at improving reading should be designed not only around teaching cognitive skills but also around learning environments that spark curiosity and nurture imagination.