Abstract

• The purpose of the study is to develop an instructional leadership model for promoting primary students' creative thinking skills. This study is based on Blase and Blase's model, Tsai's model, Mellou's model and Cole's model. This study intends to investigate whether there would be significant differences in the instructional leadership of principals and science subject leaders in term of school locations, school level, position and qualification. It is based on the six instructional leadership dimensions. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were applied in this study. Cluster sampling method was used: 112 principals and science subject leaders, 482 lower primary school teacher and 240 lower primary school students from 96 schools were selected as participants. Independent Sample t-Test, one way ANOVA, post-hoc Tukey HSD, Pearson product-moment correlation, simple linear regression and multiple regression were employed for the analysis of quantitative data. A significant difference was found in overall instructional leadership performance by school level (F=3.39, p=.037). Principals and science subject leaders in primary schools rated overall instructional leadership performance higher than those in middle schools (Mean difference=.30, p=.023) and those in high schools (Mean difference=.28, p=.040). Principals and science subject leaders' performance on instructional leadership was positively and significantly correlated with lower primary school teachers' performance on teaching practices. Performance of lower primary school teachers on teaching practices appears to be the best predictor of lower primary school students' creative thinking skills. Qualitative study suggested that school locations, school plants and facilities, and teaching learning materials may be the main source effecting the differences in instructional leadership. Based on the research findings, this study reveals an instructional leadership model for promoting primary students' creative thinking skills.