The Relationship Between School Culture and School Effectiveness with the Moderating Role of School Size: A Case Study of Ardabil Province Junior High Schools

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between school culture and school effectiveness through the moderating role of school size. The research method was descriptive-correlation and based on structural equation model. The statistical population of the study consisted of all 3064 teachers from 422 schools in Ardebil province's public junior high school teachers in the academic year 2018-19. A statistical sample of 418 people was selected from 202 schools using proportional stratified sampling. Data were collected by school culture questionnaire of Gruenert and Valentine (1998) and school effectiveness questionnaire of Hoy (2009). Their Cronbach's alpha coefficients were 0.94 and 0.90, respectively. The results of correlation coefficient test showed that there is a positive significant relationship between all dimensions of school culture and school effectiveness. Moreover, by applying the structural equation model, it was first shown that the assumed model had an acceptable fit, and secondly, the direct effect and the significant relationship between school culture and school effectiveness were confirmed. Finally, the moderating role of school size on the relationship between school culture and school effectiveness was not confirmed by neither structural equation modeling nor hierarchical regression. According to the results of this study, we might conclude that effectiveness – as a basic goal for schools – is uniformly affected by school culture, regardless of small, medium, and large school sizes.