Actionable companion · School leadership and instructional improvement

From leadership research to district action: Quality indicators of vocational schools: Partial least squares-SEM for small sample

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract This study aims to examine the relationship among the components of school management-governance, teacher quality, learning process, and learning outcome in vocational schools and evaluate the performance indicators in the accreditation instrument. Data were gathered from accreditation results of 32 vocational high schools with 44 measurement indicators from the National School Accreditation Board in Indonesia and analyzed through a Structural Equation Model using Partial Least Squares without normality assumptions. Results show that School Management-Governance significantly influences Teacher Quality (β = 0.714) and the Learning Process (β = 0.450), but not Learning Outcome. Teacher Quality affects the Learning Process (β = 0.479) but not Learning Outcome. The Learning Process has the strongest impact on Learning Outcome (β = 0.885), mediating other factors. A total of 8 measurement indicators are found insignificant, suggesting refinement of the accreditation instrument is needed. Insights drawn from this study will help other researchers and policy-makers, particularly those interested in educational quality measurement. Some highlights of the proposed method are: SEM-PLS is applied effectively to small-sample accreditation data without normality assumptions. Learning Process is the strongest predictor of Learning Outcome, mediating other factors. Only 36 of 44 accreditation indicators are significant, suggesting refinement is needed. Keywords: Structural equation model, Partial least squares, Indicators, School management, Teacher quality, Learning process, Learning outcome

A 90-day district inquiry

1. Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
2. Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
3. Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
4. Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Budi Susetyo; Anita Lie. Quality indicators of vocational schools: Partial least squares-SEM for small sample. MethodsX (2025-09-10). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2025.103620

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.