Determinants of legal competencies in Colombian school administrators: a multivariate analysis

Abstract

Based on multivariate analysis, this quantitative research examines the predictors of legal competencies of educational directors in Colombia. Legal competencies are an essential and relatively underexplored aspect of educational leadership, and in the context of Latin America various legal practices are underdeveloped in many countries. A 23-item Likert scale of legal competency was applied to 52 Colombian educational directors sampled from Colombian institutions through a cross-sectional survey design. For the perceived legal competencies (see Descriptive Table 1), the grand mean was 3.647 (SD = 1.144), with moderate to high deviations between items. Using inferential analysis, also significant underlying construct correlations between items (mean r = 0.424) were identified. Five factors accounted for 76.8% of overall variance (KMO = 0.804, Bartlett's χ² = 1061.48, p <0.001): knowledge and application of regulations (24.9%), institutional compliance (22.1%), strategic legal management (13.1%), procedural competence (9.5%), and crisis legal response (7.1%). Regarding the multivariate outcome analysis, it was found that the multivariate regression model showed strong prediction validity (R² = 0.999, adjusted R² = 0.999), and regulatory knowledge (β = 0.643) and institutional compliance (β = 0.298) were the main factors predicting the overall legal competence. Cross-validation of the model provided extra confidence in model robustness, achieving an average R² of 0.998. These findings point to the multidimensional aspect of legal competencies and areas for educational leaders for professional development. Policy, leadership, and competency,  based selection system implications are analyzed in Colombian and wider Latin American educational governance settings.