The Relationship between distributed leadership practices and academic optimism among faculty members in Northern Border University Turkish Title of Article: Northern Border Üniversitesi öğretim elemanlarının dağıtımcı liderlik uygulamaları ve akademik iyimserliği arasındaki ilişki Author(s):

The current study aimed to explore the relationship between distributed leadership practices (DLP) and academic optimism (AO) among faculty members, to identify the predictive validity of distributed leadership dimensions of academic optimism, and to identify the effects of gender in DLP and AO. DLP scale and AO scale were used as the instruments for the study. For the data analysis, Pearson’s correlation, multiple regression analyses, and paired sample t-test were used. The results showed that there is a significant positive correlation between DLP and AO. Available leadership opportunity was the best predictor to AO. There were not any significant differences between males and females in DLP and AO.


Introduction
The urgent need for higher educational institutions seems to be an effective leadership model now more than ever, and this enables individuals, employees, academic departments, colleges and universities as a whole to adapt to rapidly changing academic environments.More importantly, these institutions face a major challenge in reporting weaknesses in outputs and lack of contribution to the development of civilization, making universities the first to succeed in forming global and international trading companies and to create organizations with a global mission to expand and disseminate knowledge through research and teaching (Barnett, 2011).
A report carried out by The Wallace Foundation (2011) on school leadership, notes that one of the responsibilities of the school principal is to encourage leadership training so that teachers and other staff within the school can carry out their parts in achieving the school vision, and much effort is made to better understand how Leadership training in schools affect both staff and students.These efforts are centered on the transition from the concept of leadership as practiced by individuals (principals) to the so-called collective or distributed leadership (Mascal, Leithwood, Straus & Sacks, 2008).Some undisclosed number of up-to-date research on distributed leadership has focused on the work and practices of leaders who are distributed among others and individuals who implement these practices (Mascal et al., 2008).Recent efforts by Spillane, Halverson and Diamond (2007) and Firestone and Martinez (2007) reveal the sources of leadership in the light of the distributed leadership approach practiced by this type of leader.
There is widespread interest in the sources of distributed leadership in the West between researchers and professional leaders (Hammersley-Fletcher & Brundrett, 2005;Storey, 2004), while this situation is different in the Arab world.However, the methodological evidence of the influence of distributed leadership within educational institutions residuals is modest, and the results of leadership practices distributed to schools and students are highly flawed in the West (Mascal et al., 2008).The responsibilities lie on researchers and practitioners within our educational institutions to address the study of this type of leadership and to reveal the results of the application in order to improve the educational performance within these institutions.
Most research carried out on leadership focus on the impact of leaders themselves on schools and on students (Leithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson &Wahlstrom, 2004;Silins & Mulford, 2002), but the direct effects of leadership on students' achievements are still unexplored (Hallinger & Heck, 1996).The challenge now is to identify the indirect path through which leadership influences students, and this is the challenge that aims at determining the variables that affect leaders (Hallinger & Heck, 1996;Leithwood & Jantzi, 2000;Wahlstrom & Louis, 2008).
Among the many potential variables that link the relationship between the influences of leaders to students, many researchers have concentrated on teachers' beliefs and emotional states (Leithwood, 2006;Wahlstrom & Louis, 2008).Among the studies that contributed to this trend are those of Hoy and Tarter (1992), Hoy et al. (2006), Tschannen-Moran et al. (1998), which examined the emotional state of teachers and their impact on students' achievements.This research on leadership is the basic motivation for teachers and their beliefs and emotional feelings; and among these beliefs and feelings, a new interest appeared.The term "academic optimism" refers to an organizational concept that describes the faculty members' assessment of the mental activity and academic achievement of their students (the academic concentration), the extent of the collective effectiveness and the confidence of the instructors in the students and their parents.Hasanvand, Zeinabadi, Shomami and Karfestani (2013) pointed out that distributed leadership has cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects that may be matched with the components of academic optimism.Academic optimism, therefore, has three components: self-efficacy, trust in students and parents, and academic concentration.The academic concentration is the behavioral component and it always drives high expectations in the school work (Hoy, Tarter, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2006) and shows the correlation between this components.The academic effectiveness is connected to a number of positive organizational behaviors such as professional and human success (Lee, Dedrick, & Smith, 1991).

Problem Statement
Academic achievement is an important assessment instrument in educational institutions, and it is completely essential mainstay in assessing the quality of the educational process within these institutions (Chang, 2011).So many Arab and foreign studies have addressed the impact of many families and individual factors in area of the economic, cultural, and motivational situation of education on academic attainment (Chen & Cheng, 2008;Shi, 2003;Weng, 2006).
Even though educational literature pointed to the impact of educational institutions on academic achievement, the roles of academic leaders and faculty members cannot be denied.These roles are essential.The teaching environment within the institution can be improved through the leadership style improving the academic achievement of students (Hsieh, 2010;Li, Chiang &Chiao, 2010).Additionally, faculty members are the actual or real practitioners of the teaching process; therefore, their beliefs, strategies, knowledge, and classroom management are the direct influences of student education (Liu & Lin, 2007;Love & Kruger, 2005;Sun & Wang, 2007) Mascalet al . (2008) found insufficient direct evidence of the impact of the leadership pattern on student education, although many researchers acknowledged this effect.Woods (2015) observes that leadership practices have a clear impact on students.In a study by Chang (2011), the results indicate the effect of the leadership pattern distributed in the academic achievement of students indirectly through its direct impact on academic optimism in primary schools in Taiwan.Agreeing with Mascalet al. (2008), their results indicate a direct correlation between leadership style which distributed academic optimism to teachers in primary and secondary schools in Canada, which led to improved academic achievement of students.The results are also in line with the results of the study of (Malloy, 2012), which indicated a positive correlation between the distributed leadership style and academic optimism of teachers in secondary schools in Canada, leading to a positive correlation between academic optimism and academic achievement of students.
It is obvious from previous studies that the effectiveness of leadership style distributed made some impact on the academic optimism of teachers, which in turn mirrored the academic achievement of students in a positive way.However, most of these studies were conducted in public schools and in non-Arab environments.Within the scope of these researchers' knowledge, one Arab's study, by Abdallah (2015), observes a positive correlation between distributed leadership and academic optimism in Oman's secondary schools in Jordan.The researcher observes that most of the studies that dealt with the leadership distributed in institutions of higher education were not empirical studies, but rather theoretical (Jones, Harvey, Lefoe, 2014b;Tian, Risku, Collin, 2016;Vuori, 2017;Wan, 2014).However, this study attempts to bridge the gap by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between distributed leadership and academic optimism at the level of higher education in Saudi Arabia.This is in response to the aspirations and expectations of the vision of Saudi Arabia 2030, to improve the performance of Saudi universities.

Questions of the Study
Question 1: Is there a significant-statistical correlation between distributed leadership practices and academic optimism among faculty members?
Question 2: Which dimensions of distributed leadership are more optimistic about academic optimism among faculty members?
Question 3: Are there any statistically significant differences in the distributed leadership practices of faculty members that are attributed to the gender variable (male/female)?
Question 4: Are there any statistically significant differences in the academic optimism of faculty members in relation to the gender variable (male -female)?

Study Purpose
The present study aims at: 1. Revealing the correlation between distributed leadership practices and academic optimism among faculty members of the Northern Border University.
2. Detecting any dimensions of distributed leadership that may predict the academic optimism of the faculty staff of the Northern Boarder University.
3. Detecting gender differences in leadership practices distributed among faculty members.
4. Detecting gender differences in academic optimism among faculty members.

Study Significance
1.It reveals the lack of studies in the Arab environment, which is capable of dealing with the leadership distributed in institutions of higher education.
2. It provides the introduction to distributed leadership as one of the most modern administrative approaches capable of developing performance among faculty members and heads of departments, and administrative leadership in the university in light of references to previous studies.
3. It can contribute to the disclosure of some special practices by some academic department heads and faculty members as central decision-making rather than decision-making, creating a nonsupportive environment for development and innovation.
4. It is one of the first studies that deal with the concept of academic optimism in the environment of higher education in the Arab environment, so it is expected that this study will provide a theoretical framework and it results will add more knowledge to researchers.
5. It provides the opportunity to educate the university community on the term 'academic optimism' and its implications, which are related to the academic achievement of students.
6.It may help clarify the effect of the type of leadership in academic achievement of students.Results from this study will highlight the impacts of leadership by revealing whether the distributed leadership is related to the academic optimism of faculty members, which has proven its high impact on academic achievement of students in some previous studies.

Literature Review and Previous Studies
Since 1900, several research has been conducted on the theory of leadership.In light of this, different leadership styles have been presented.Each leadership style has its individual pattern and theoretical basis, both of which are considered appropriate in certain situations.The leader of the educational institution must take into account the environment of the institution and the specialization of the members involved with it.The origin of leadership does not only stem from the authority of the leader, but also from the leading members to manage the entire work group in every situation facing the educational institution.Thus, the leader must be able to manage the whole work group in every situation facing the educational institution.The task of the leader is to build the vision, to direct and combine the strengths of the institution.Furthermore, the leader must determine the future development of the organization and achieve its objectives (Huang, 2008).
The idea of distributed leadership has been integrated among researchers in the West, policy makers, educational reformers, and practicing leaders (Hammersley-Fletcher & Brundrett, 2005;Storey, 2004).In order to better understand the notion of distributed leadership, Spillane and his colleagues (2007) analyzed leadership practices within many institutions.In addition, Fletcher and Kaufer (2003) points out that without leadership, individuals cannot play their roles in determining the advancement of their institutions and influence on the practices within these institutions.Therefore, the strength of the educational institution stems from the extent of its practice of distributed leadership.
Teaching staff are the key to ensuring the quality of any country's education, and the revision of teacher-related pedagogy finds that assessing teachers 'beliefs is an important input to understand and interpret their external behavior and inner thoughts.Teachers' beliefs consist of teachers' views on education and their views on teaching and about students (Pajares, 1992).These beliefs have an important and direct impact on their behavior, teaching efficiency, and classroom management (Chang, 1996;Chu & Yeh.2003;Judson, 2006;Ho, 2009).
Academic optimism, which is a relatively recent term, for faculty staff is one of their beliefs about teaching, learning, and students, a term that primarily describes how members value mental activity, academic achievement, collective effectiveness and overall trust in students and parents (Hoy, Tarter & Woolfolk-Hoy, 2006a).Hoy et al. (2006b) noted that academic optimism has three components: the first one is collective effectiveness, which refers to teachers' perceptions of their collective efforts that have a positive impact on students (Goddard et al., 2000).This concept reflects on what teachers think of their collective ability to achieve, and does not believe in the individual ability of students to achieve anything in class (Tschannen-Moran, Salloum, & Goddard, 2014).
The higher the level of collective effectiveness, the higher the probability of students' performances; the lower the collective effectiveness of the institution, the more difficulties the institution may encounter.The results of a few studies indicate that collective effectiveness has a clear impact on students' achievements (Bandura, 1993).In other scholastic factors such as discipline (Tschannen-Moran & Barr, 2004), Goddardetal. (2000) discover that the theoretical elements of collective effectiveness, which include analysis of the task of teaching and analysis of teaching efficiency, are highly correlated within educational institutions.
The term "task analysis" refers to teachers' assessment of their teaching needs (Hoy & Miskel, 2008).This analysis is presented individually and collectively within the school.At the school level, the analysis of the teaching task raises questions about the limitations teachers face while working in the school and what they have to achieve in order to have a successful school, while comparing the efficiency of teaching to the teacher's analysis of the components of teaching according to high-precision standards that reflect the collective performance (Gooddard et al., 2000), which leads to the emergence of an analysis of the skills, training, methods and experience of collective teaching.The provision of teaching efficiency may include the beliefs of faculty members and the ability of all students at school success (Hoy & Miskel, 2008).
Both the teaching task analysis and the instructional efficiency occur concurrently as they interact with each other as long as collective effectiveness is there (Goddard et al., 2007).The second one is Collective trust in parents and students: There is no agreement among researchers on a comprehensive and unified definition of trust, and the lack of this agreement is due to the complicated structure of this concept, which does not pave the way for an integrated picture.Researchers tend to look at confidence within the context of their own academic fields.This is the basis of various definitions which sometimes contribute to further confusion about what this concept is and how it works (Adams, 2004).Rotter (1967) defines confidence as an expectation by an individual or group that the word, promise, or oral or written statement of another individual or group can be relied upon.Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, and Camerer (1998) defines trust as the state of mind that includes the intention to accept and be exposed to based on positive expectations of the intentions and behavior of others.Both Blomqvist and Stahle (1999) define trust as the behavior and good will of the other party, while (Lewicki et al., 1998) defines confidence as "positive expectations for the behavior of others."Al-Badrani (2010) points out that confidence is when one feels reassured by the belief that he has the ability to perform a given task without making mistakes.Hoy and Tschannen-Moran (1999) observes that trust has five aspects; including charity, reliability, competence, honesty, and openness.Hoy and Tschannen-Moran (2007) believes that charity represents trust in the good faith of those who are trusted or a position of mutual interest between two parties (Goddard et al., 2001).Charity is an important element of trust because the mutual attitude of goodwill is important in personal relationships (Hoy et al., 2007).Both Rutler and Cantrell (1984) believe that reliability is the belief of the individual that he can rely on others to follow their obligations.We can count on those we trust to do something by telling them that they are capable of doing so.Trust is related to consistency in behavior and knowledge of what to expect from others.Your confidence in someone means you trust that this person will perform the task assigned by you as you expect from him (Mishra, 1996).Efficiency means a person's ability to complete the required tasks while meeting the required standards of excellence (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2000).Trust creates the belief that a person can meet our expectations of performance in the task assigned to him.Honesty is an essential and crucial condition for confidence to be realized and it is linked to the personality and authenticity of the individual.Openness to others is the extent to which relevant information is shared, and a process that takes place through the presentation of the individual's skills and knowledge to others.Goddard et al. (2001) points out that openness generates trust while the behavior of blocking or isolation raises suspicion.Goddard, Sweetland and Hoy (2000) argue that academic focus or pressure refers to the extent to which an institution moves by seeking academic excellence.It is a way of visualizing the school's behavioral and normative environment that influences more than individual and organizational behaviors.As a collective feature, academic focus not only reflects how successful the school is at academic success, but also reflects the capabilities and efforts to improve students' learning and academic achievement, and therefore, Hoy and his colleagues have added it as a component of behavior for academic optimism (Hoy et al., 2006).
Several studies indicate that student achievement is influenced by teachers' beliefs, expectations, and academic optimism (Lin, 2007;Ou, 2006).The extent to which teachers assess students' achievement is an important variable in assessing the quality of educational institutions (Chin & Wu, 2009;Chin, Wu & Deng, 2007).
The teachers' appreciation of the academic achievement made by students leads to a high degree of self-efficacy for both students and members, as well as the development of the confidence of the leaders of the educational institution in the teachers.This eventually leads to generating of positive expectations from the community towards this institution.The components of academic optimism are important characteristics in describing the academic success of educational institutions.Therefore, the current research aims at revealing the academic optimism of the faculty members of one of the institutions of higher education and to disclose the extent of its influence on the practices of leadership distributed within this institution, especially because the pattern of leadership and practices aid the teaching of the strongest influential elements in student achievement.

Research Design
In this study, quantitative research design was utilized in identifying distributed leadership practices DLP and academic optimism AO of faculty members.

Study group
The population of the study is comprised of 240 instructors who worked during the 2016-2017 academic year in Northern Border University, Faculty of Education and Arts, and Faculty of Medicine.The scales have been randomly distributed among 240 instructors.From the 240 scales distributed, 118 of them have been taken back as filled and the return rate is 49.16%.Also, 122 of the 240 forms incompletely filled have not been included in analysis.Hence, the study group of the research was composed of 118 instructors selected by the researchers.The study tools were standardized on 30 instructors as a survey sample and thus became the basic sample 88 instructing staff, 56 of the instructors participating in the research were male and 32 were female.The age of the participants ranged from 38 to 59 (̅ =46.67).

Data Collection Tools
The instruments used in the study were Distributed leadership practices questionnaire.The questionnaire was constructed in the light of a review of theoretical literature and previous studies on distributed leadership.It includes three dimensions: the leadership roles of the teaching staff (10 statements), the leadership roles of the students (5 statements), the leadership opportunities available to all (8 statements).
The instrument was formed in the initial form of (23) items, which excluded one statement belonging to the third dimension, and thus, formed the questionnaire in the final version of ( 22) items.This responded according to the scale of the Hexadecimal Likert (strongly agree =6, agree=5, agree to somewhat extent=4, disagree to somewhat= 3, disagree= 2, and strongly disagree= 1) to be applied in positive statements and vice versa in negative ones.

Reliability
After the tool was constructed in its preliminary form, the researcher applied the tool to a sample of 30 staff of the study community.The result of the calculation of the correlation coefficients (structural honesty) shows that all the statements were statistically significant for (α ≤ .01)while the third dimension was deleted.
The researcher used the half-way method to calculate the stability coefficient.The results of the analysis show that the coefficient of stability after the correction using the Guttman equation is .86.Also, the Cronbach Alpha coefficient is calculated at (.94) at .00 significance level.The Academic Optimism Questionnaire: The questionnaire consisted of three dimensions: collective effectiveness (7 items), collective confidence (10 items), academic focus (9 items).The instrument was formed in the initial form of (26) items and after the exclusion of two terms belonging to the second dimension, the final version had 24 items and responded to the instrument on the five scale of Likert (always -often -sometimes -rarely -never).When corrected, responses were given as: (always = 5, often = 4, sometimes = 3, rarely = 2, never = 1), and applied in positive items and vice versa in negative ones.

Validity
After the tool was built in its preliminary form, the researcher applied the tool to a pilot sample of (30) members of the study community.The results of the calculation of correlation coefficients (Constructional Honesty) show that all instruments' items are statistically significant for (.05, .01),except 11 and 12, which belong to the second dimension and were deleted.

Instrument reliability
The researcher observes that the stability coefficient after the correction using the Guttman equation is (.95), and then the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient is calculated to be (0.93) at the level of .00. .49

Data Collection
At the beginning of the second semester in 2016-2017, the researcher got approval of application the current study from deanship of scientific research in Northern Border University.Then, the researcher sent DLP and AO questionnaires to (30) faculty members to standardized the data tools.After that, the researcher sent the study tools to all faculty members at faculty of arts and education and medicine school.The application period took about two months.

Data Analysis
The researcher used the Pearson correlation coefficient calculator and independent samples t-test to analyze the gathered data.Normality of distribution was determined by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (KS test).

Findings Question 1: Is There a Significant Statistical Correlation between Distributed Leadership Practices and Academic Optimism among Faculty Members?
To answer this research question, Pearson correlation coefficient was used, the following table shows the results: .00 Table 3 shows a statistically significant correlation between distributed leadership practices and academic optimism.The correlation coefficient is .50,which is statistically significant at .00, distributed leadership practices and collective effectiveness is .49,distributed leadership practices and collective confidence is .38,Distributed leadership practices and academic concentration are .34,which are statistically significant.

Question 2: Which Dimensions of Distributed Leadership are More Predictable about Academic Optimism among Faculty Members?
To answer this question, the researcher used the regression analysis by the Stepwise method and the following table illustrates the results: ) adjusted is .29.This indicates that the distributed leadership available predicts 29.10 % from a variance of academic optimism of the variance.To verify the predictive value of the model, the residuals and regression matrix are used.As it is shown in the table above, the (F) value is 36.66 by significance statistical level at .00, which indicates that the distributed leadership opportunities available in the prediction of academic optimism and the researcher should extract the regression of leadership opportunities available from academic optimism as shown in Table 6.It is seen that the regression constant is 63.45, which is statistically significant; the t value is 14.28, which is statistically significant at .00.Also, the results indicate that the leadership roles of the members and the leadership roles of the students are not predicted in academic optimism; and thus the regression equation is: Academic optimism = 63.45 + (.81 × available leadership opportunities).Table 7 shows that there are no statistically significant differences in the dimensions of the distributed leadership or the total score attributed due to the gender variable.There is no agreement with the results of some previous studies indicating differences due to gender in some distributed leadership practices in favor of the males.To answer this question, independent sample t.Test was used.The following table shows the results: The results indicate that there are no statistically significant differences in the dimensions of academic optimism and the total degree due to the gender variable.This can be illustrated in light of similar organizational culture among the university faculties.This finding differs from most previous studies, which indicated gender differences in academic optimism attributed in favor of males.

Discussion, Conclusion and Implications
Regarding the first question, the result showed that a statistically significant correlation between distributed leadership practices and academic optimism, distributed leadership practices and collective efficacy, distributed leadership practices and collective trust, and distributed leadership practices and academic press.
The distributed leadership has a positive impact on teachers, allowing teachers to participate in the decision-making process, creating a common vision, accepting responsibility collectively, creating collaborative relationships among employees within the educational organization, supporting professional and personal development, develop new skills and knowledge, and increase in the sense of commitment and belonging.
The distributed leadership increases self-efficacy of teachers due to the increased confidence of teachers in themselves to perform the required tasks successfully.Hence, the collective efficacy of teachers develops.Besides that distributed leadership provide an open, supportive, and nurturing environment, leading to develop a culture of trust.As Moran and Hoy (1997) mentioned, trust can be nurtured or weakened by behaviors leadership.Distributed leadership creates a climate of serious and organized learning environments filled with high goals and expectations (Tschannen-Moran & Garies, 2015).In this climate, teachers like each other, students respect their teachers and colleagues, and both teachers and students are highly motivated.Therefore, academic focus can be developed.This result is consistent with the results of the studies by Abdallah (2015), Chang (2011), Hasanvand et al. (2013), Kösterelioğlu (2017), Malloy (2012), and Mascal et al. (2008).Mascal et al. (2008) found out that planned approaches for distributed leadership and high levels of teachers' academic optimism showed a positive relationship.Chang (2011) found that distributed leadership had a positive influence on academic optimism among 1500 Taiwanese teachers.Malloy (2012) showed that there was a positive correlation between aligned distributed leadership and academic optimism among 2122 teachers.Hasanvand et al. (2013) indicated that a positive relationship between distributed leadership and academic optimism among 418 Iranian principals.Abdallah (2015) found a positive relationship between distributed leadership and academic optimism among 480 Jordanian teachers.Lastly, Kösterelioğlu (2017) found a significant positive correlation between teachers' distributed leadership perception and overall perception of academic optimism among 321 Turkish teachers.
Regarding the second question, the results showed that the strongest predictor of academic optimism is available leadership opportunities but the leadership roles of the members and the leadership roles of the students are not predicted in academic optimism creating the regression equation, which is: Academic optimism = 63.45 + (.81 × available leadership opportunities).
This indicates that the more leadership opportunities that are made available to faculty members and students, the greater the academic optimism within the academic department is.The leadership roles of the members and the leadership roles of the students do not affect the academic optimism; therefore they are not predicted in academic optimism.
Regarding the third question, the results showed that there are no statistically significant differences in the dimensions of the distributed leadership or the total score attributed due to the gender variable.There is no agreement with the results of some previous studies indicating differences due to gender in some distributed leadership practices in favor of the males.This can be attributed to the difference in the sample of the current study, but the samples of previous studies indicated that the current study dealt with the faculty members of the universities, while the previous studies dealt with samples that included both male and female teachers in primary, middle, or secondary schools.The researcher suggests that the organizational culture may vary in the university education environment of the public education environment.
Regarding the fourth question, the results showed no statistically significant differences in the dimensions of academic optimism and the total degree due to the gender variable.This can be illustrated in light of similar organizational culture among the university faculties.This finding differs from most previous studies, which indicated gender differences in academic optimism attributed in favor of males.
This might be attributed to the fact that the target sample in the current study differs from the previous studies, which included both male and female teachers in public schools, as well as the differences of both organizational culture and educational environment between higher education institutions and public educational institutions.
In light of the results of this study, the researcher makes the following recommendations: Effective planning of leadership functions within the academic departments in order to enhance the practice of distributed leadership.
Improvement of academic optimism of the members of the teaching staff through the functions of distributed leadership.
Provision of several leadership opportunities as much as possible for both faculty members and students to develop their academic optimism.
It would be beneficial to carry out the study in other faculties in university to examine the generalizability of the results of this study, which was on faculty of arts and education and medicine school. .

Question 4 :
Are There Any Statistically Significant Differences in the Academic Optimism of Faculty Members in Relation due to the Gender Variable (Male -Female)?

Table 1 .
The Correlation Coefficients with the Dimensions and the Instrument as a whole for the Distributed Leadership Scale.

Table 2 .
The Correlation Coefficients with the Dimensions and the Instrument as a whole for the Academic Optimism Scale.

Table 3 .
Pearson Correlation Coefficients between Scores of Distributed Leadership and Academic Optimism.

Table 4 .
Results of Regression Analysis by the Stepwise Method.

Table 5 .
Results of Residuals and Regression Matrix.

Table 6 .
The Results of the Multiple Linear Regression of Factors Predicting Academic Optimism among Instructing Staff from Distributed Leadership Practices.

Are There Any Statistically Significant Differences in the Distributed Leadership Practices Of Faculty Staff That are Attributable to the Gender Variable (Male/Female)?
To answer this question independent sample "t Test" was used.The following table shows the results:

Table 7 .
The Result of Independent Sample t-Test on Gender of Distributed Leadership Practices.

Table 8 .
The Result of Independent Sample t-Test on Gender of Academic Optimism.