Teacher Leadership Competency and Professional Teaching Preparedness of Pre-Service Teachers in Higher Education

This study examined teacher leadership competency and professional teaching preparedness among 178 pre-service teachers in a higher education institution in Davao City. The study employed a non-experimental quantitative design using descriptive, comparative, and correlational analyses. Data were collected through the Teacher Leadership Competency Scale and the Professional Teaching Preparedness Scale and analyzed using mean, standard deviation, one-way Analysis of Variance, and Pearson product-moment correlation. Teacher leadership competency had an overall mean of 3.49, while the professional teaching preparedness summary had a mean of 3.50. Teacher leadership competency differed significantly across the five teacher education programs, F(4, 173) = 2.933, p = .022, η² = .064, whereas the professional teaching preparedness did not, F(4, 173) = 1.201, p = .312, η² = .027. The association between teacher leadership competency and professional teaching preparedness was statistically significant but very weak, r = .191, p = .010 (r² ≈ .036). The findings describe perceived leadership competency and classroom teaching preparedness, engagement, and self-efficacy within one institution and should not be interpreted as evidence of a strong or causal relationship.