Curriculum Implementation as Mediator Between Instructional Leadership and Teacher Competence in Public Elementary Schools

This study investigated the mediating role of curriculum implementation in the relationship between school leadership practices and teacher pedagogical competence in public elementary schools. Employing a descriptive-correlational and mediation research design, the study utilized Stratified Random Sampling to select the respondents; the study consisted of 4 School Heads and 40 teachers from the South District, Mandaue City Division. Data were gathered using validated questionnaires measuring school leadership practices across the five Philippine Professional Standards for School Heads (PPSSH) domains, curriculum implementation, and teacher competence. The study used mediation analysis, a statistical method for determining how an independent variable affected a dependent variable through a third variable called a mediator. While school heads demonstrated a very high overall level of leadership competency, excelling particularly in external stakeholder engagement and safety operation distinct vulnerabilities emerged in transparent fiscal management and structured classroom observation feedback. Furthermore, mediation analysis revealed that curriculum implementation serves as a crucial mediator between school leadership practices and teacher pedagogical competence. The findings contribute to educational leadership literature by empirically demonstrating that leadership practices are associated with enhancements in teacher competence when structurally mediated through active curriculum execution, resource management, and localized assessment procedures. Ultimately, the study underscores that optimizing curriculum implementation is essential for associating administrative governance with potential improvements in teaching and learning quality within public elementary education, while highlighting the need for longitudinal designs to establish definitive causal pathways.