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Unearthing Context

            Table 2.1 Descriptive Statistics and Correlations of Study Variables
             Variable            Mean        sd      in- schauto      escs
                                                 stlead
             instlead             .     .
             schauto             –.     .    –.
             escs                –.     .    –.*   .*
             science            .    .    –.**  .**  .**
            notes N = 60. *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **Correlation
            is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).


            ships between instructional leadership (instlead), school autonomy
            (schauto), economic, social, and cultural status (escs), and science
            achievement (see Table 2.1).
              The results revealed that school principals instructional leadership
            was significantly negatively correlated with escs (r = –0.300, p <0.05)
            and science achievement (r =–0.443, p < 0.01), suggesting that higher
            instructional leadership was associated with lower ESCS levels and
            lower student performance in science. Meanwhile, school autonomy
            was positively correlated with escs (r =0.322, p < 0.05) and science
            achievement (r =0.416, p < 0.01), indicating that greater school auton-
            omy was associated with higher escs and better science performance.
            In this regard, both Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 are confirmed.
              As expected, escs showed the strongest correlation with science
            achievement (r = 0.703, p < 0.01), confirming that students from higher
            socioeconomic backgrounds tend to perform better in science. So, Hy-
            pothesis 3 is confirmed. These findings establish the foundational re-
            lationships among key variables, providing justification for conducting
            mediation and moderation analyses to further explore the role of escs
            in explaining and moderating these effects.

            Testing for the Moderation Effects
            The first moderation analysis aimed to examine whether escs mod-
            erates the relationship between school principals’ instructional leader-
            ship and science achievement. As can be seen in Table 2.2, the model ex-
                                                             2
            plained 56 of the variance in science achievement (R = 0.56), which
            indicates a strong explanatory power. The overall model was statisti-
            cally significant, F (3,56) = 23.34, p < 0.001, suggesting that the included
            predictors (instlead, escs, and their interaction) contribute signif-
            icantly to explaining science scores.


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