The role of homeroom teachers in mediating the impact of principals’ empowering leadership on adolescent engagement

Based on empowerment leadership and upper echelons theories, the current study examines the main question: How does school principals’ empowering leadership affect adolescents’ engagement? I argue that empowering school leaders affect students’ affective and behavioural engagement in school through homeroom teachers’ engagement in their work. The study further examines the effect of a collaboration between homeroom and class teachers as moderator between the homeroom teacher and students’ engagement. Based on data from three sources: 317 homeroom teachers, 504 teachers, and 6,589 students from 64 Arab Israeli middle schools (grades 7–9), multilevel structural equation modelling results showed that empowering school leadership impacts students’ affective and behavioural engagement through homeroom teachers’ engagement. However, collaboration between homeroom teachers and their class teachers does not serve to moderate between homeroom teachers’ and students’ engagement, an innovative result indicating the power of empowering leadership and homeroom engagement as the main effect on students’ engagement.