Abstract

Today, innovative education, which is rooted in the professionalism of teachers, has become a problem-solving approach to teaching and learning. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of managers' transactional leadership on the innovation of sports teachers with the mediating role of mindfulness. The present study is an applied and correlational study in which data collection was conducted in the field. The statistical population of this study consisted of 686 physical education teachers working in elementary and secondary schools in Golestan. Based on the Cochran formula, 247 people participated in this study as a purposeful sample size. Three questionnaires were used to collect data for this study: transactional leadership (Pottery, 2018), mindfulness (Chiu et al., 2017), and innovation (Zhou and George, 2001). The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by sports management experts and their reliability was calculated in a preliminary study using Cronbach's alpha as 0.79, 0.83 and 0.82, respectively. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. SPSS 25 and Smart PLS 3 software were used to analyze the data. The findings of the study showed that there is a positive and significant effect of transactional leadership on the innovation of sports teachers with the mediating role of mindfulness. According to the results obtained, it seems that it is recommended to encourage school administrators to establish appropriate communication with sports teachers.