Abstract

Innovative leadership provides an organizational foundation for encouraging teachers to develop and implement new educational practices; however, different leadership dimensions may not contribute equally to teachers’ educational innovativeness. This study examined the levels of school administrators’ innovative leadership and teachers’ educational innovativeness and identified the leadership dimensions that significantly predicted teachers’ educational innovativeness under the Secondary Educational Service Area Office Saraburi, Thailand. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted with 297 teachers selected through stratified random sampling according to school size from a population of 1,265 teachers. Data were collected using a five-point questionnaire. Content validity was evaluated by five experts, with all retained items obtaining an item-objective congruence value of 1.00. A pilot test with 30 teachers yielded an overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .862. Data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and stepwise multiple regression. School administrators’ innovative leadership was high overall (M = 4.19, SD = .46), with creative thinking receiving the highest mean. Teachers’ educational innovativeness was also high (M = 4.21, SD = .45), with technology use receiving the highest mean. The final regression model was statistically significant, F(4, 292) = 62.688, p < .001, and explained 46.20% of the variance in teachers’ educational innovativeness (R = .680, R² = .462, adjusted R² = .455). Creative thinking was the strongest predictor (β = .310), followed by vision for change (β = .260), use of technology and information (β = .210), and teamwork (β = .170). Systems and networking did not make a significant additional contribution (β = .058, p = .237). The main hypothesis and four of the five subsidiary hypotheses were supported. The findings suggest that leadership development should prioritize creative problem solving, a shared direction for change, evidence-informed technology use, and professional teamwork. Potential applications extend to agricultural, biological, and environmental science education; however, discipline-specific conclusions require samples that explicitly identify teachers’ subject assignments. Because the study used cross-sectional self-reported data, the reported relationships should be interpreted as statistical prediction rather than causality.