The School-Based Professional Learning Leader Role in Malaysian Context

School administrators should play their vital roles in implementing effective school-based professional learning which can give deep impact on teacher development. Researches regarding school-based professional learning shows that there are four major roles played by school administrator; builder, designer, implementer and reflective leader in influencing professional learning. Thus, a school-based professional learning leader roles model which fit the Malaysian education setting should be identified. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the key factors of school-based professional learning leader roles in Malaysian setting. This study is conducted at 60 secondary schools in Malaysia where the information is gathered from two phases of data collections by using multi-stage cluster sampling technique. The analysis has been done through three sets of data. The exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis are used to obtain construct validity. The Cronbach Alpha of the items is .904, meanwhile for each factor developed ranged from .60 to .82. Data from the survey is used to test and confirm the four key factors expressed in the proposed model. The findings indicate that professional learning leader roles model has highly significant effect on the four underlying dimensions tested; chi-square per degree of freedom ratio (x²/df) = 3.66, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .99, Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) = .99, Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI) = .95 and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .08. The source of data collected is Malaysia hence the results may not easily generalize to other areas or countries. However, the findings are valuable for school-based professional learning developers, teachers and teacher educator references, especially for those whose circumstances are similar to those in Malaysia.