The Academic Performance and Child Perceptions of Teacher Leadership Styles

Abstract This study aimed to verify the relationship between the academic performance of children and their perception of the leadership styles of their teachers. There are119 students from 4th and 5th years of public elementary schools, aged between 8 and 1 who participated the study. The students were distributed according to their grades in three groups: low, medium and high school performance. The Teacher Leadership Styles Inventory was used for data collection. The results showed that, in relation to the school performance groups and the teacher leadership styles, there was no statistically significant result (p> 0.05). However, there was a relationship between the perception of greater use of coercive control by the teacher in the group of lower school performance when compared to the group with high school performance, this difference being statistically significant (p <0.05). We discuss this relationship and point out the importance of more positive educational practices.