Educational Leadership Research

Abstract The purpose of this research is to investigate the correlation of spiritual well-being and authentic leadership with academic optimism, among elementary school teachers. A sample of 225 teachers from the elementary school teachers in Robat Karim district were selected, using single-stage cluster random sampling. Research data was collected by means of three questionnaires: Ellison and paloutzian spiritual wellbeing questionnaire (1982), comprising Existential well-being and religious well-being with 93% of reliability; Walumbwa and et al. questionnaire of authentic leadership (2008), comprising Relational in transparenc, Internalized moral reasaning, Balanced processing, and self-awareness, with 89% reliability; and Beared et al. questionnaire of elementary school teachers’ academic optimism (2010), comprising teacher self-efficiency, trust in students and parents, and academic emphasis, with 78% reliability. Received data was then analyzed by means of single-sample T test and multiple regression. Findings indicate that spiritual well-being can explain 21% of variance in academic optimism. Moreover, authentic leadership factors account for 11% of variance in academic optimism. Consequently, spiritual well-being and authentic leadership can have a positive impact on teachers’ academic optimism and therefore on the quality of learning process.