Leadership Styles of Principals and School Organizational Performance
Chapter One
Purpose of Study
- To identify the most suitable leadership style this will make teachers work better.
- To find out whether teachers’ job performance has any relationship with principals’ leadership style.
- To suggest and recommend factors which will improve the leadership style of principals so as to ensure a state of mutual co-existence between the principal and his teachers.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter describes the review of related literature under the following headings:
- Theoretical framework
- Leadership styles and effects on teachers’ job performance
- Leadership dimension
- Types of leadership approach
- Relationship between leadership styles and motivation
- The role of the principal in fostering staff relationship in school administration
- The role of staff members in fostering effective principal staff relationship
- Job performance
- Summary of review of related literature
Theoretical Framework
The studies by Getzel and Guba (1977) and Ajayi (1978), on role theory, provided the theoretical framework to the study.
Role theory states that organizations are social systems in which people occupy various positions.
Peretomode (1991), defined that a social system is a priority of individual action interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a physical or environmental aspects. Each position is expected to be occupied by a specific type of individual or class of individuals who behave in particular way if the goals of the organization are to be achieved.
Roles are complementary and interdependent in an organization. In a sense, a role is a prescription not only for the given role incumbent but also for the incumbent of other roles within the system. In any hierarchical set up, the expectations of one role cannot be appreciated in isolation. This for example, the role of the principal and the teachers in any institution cannot really be appreciated except in relation to one another.
It is the quality of being complementary which focuses on two or more roles into a coherent interactive unit and which make it possible for us to conceive an institution as having a characteristic structure.
This is particularly relevant to this study because this quality of complementary role brings out the fact that the members of an organization have input on what the leader of the organization does.
According to Whaow (1995), democratic or participative leadership style relies heavily on the wish to allow members of a group who will be affected by a policy to be involved in the formation of such a policy. The emphasis here is that, democratic leadership style allows every member of the organization (including the leader) to meaningfully contribute to the decision in making progress within the organization. Democratic leadership styles encourages division of labour and freedom of members to mix freely for the cross fertilization of ideas which are all important for the success of the whole organization.
Laissez-faire, a French expression which means “let the people do it the way they want”.
According to Whaow (1995), this type of leadership style is devoid of any regulatory rules for the workers in the organization. This type of leader allows each member of the organization to develop individual standards by using trial and error method rather than guiding them. This type of leadership style has no authority over the members of the organization.
On the other hand, Gatzel and Guba (1977), in their studies distinguished three types of leaders:
- Nomothetic leaders:These types of leaders emphasized the job requirements of the organization. He ensures that the rules and requirements of the organization are enforced and the followers are constrained to guide their individual behaviour by them.
- Idiographic Leader:This type of leader makes few organizational demands. He stresses the important of the individual need of members of staff and seeks personal relationship with each of them. He relies heavily on group members own values to ensure that their work is done adequately.
- The Transactional Leader:This type of leader is a hybrid of the nomothetic and idiographic styles. He shows a balanced and flexible concern for both the needs of the individual member and the task of the institution.
Ogunu (2002) indentified three leadership styles:
Authoritarian or Authoritative leadership style characterizes a leader who behaves like a dictator. Such a leader makes decisions unilaterally without consultation with his people. Compliance to his decisions and laid down rules are expected by force if necessary. He fears that involving others in decision making could leads to a usurpation of his power.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
This chapter describes the method and procedure that were used in the study. The chapter focused attention on the following: Design of the study, population, sample and sampling technique, development of the instrument, validity of instrument, reliability of instrument and data analysis.
Design of the Study
Research designs are perceived to be an overall strategy adopted by the researcher whereby different components of the study are integrated in a logical manner to effectively address a research problem. In this study, the researcher employed the survey research design. This is due to the nature of the study whereby the opinion and views of people are sampled. According to Singleton & Straits, (2009), Survey research can use quantitative research strategies (e.g., using questionnaires with numerically rated items), qualitative research strategies (e.g., using open-ended questions), or both strategies (i.e., mixed methods). As it is often used to describe and explore human behaviour, surveys are therefore frequently used in social and psychological research.
Population
Ten public secondary schools were used for this study. Ten teachers each were drawn from the selected schools. The ten teachers were randomly picked from each school that has been selected. These selected teachers were those who have been teaching for more than two years under their principals as there has been no recent transfer of principals. This is to give an objective assessment of the principals’ leadership styles as perceived by the teachers.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION, INTERPRETATION, ANALYSIS OF DATA AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
This chapter highlights data analysis, interpretation and discussion of results of the study.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Summary
This study was designed to determine the influence of principals’ leadership styles on teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Sapele Local Government Area of Delta State.
The study described and analyzed the relationship between the principals’ leadership styles, motivational patterns in relation to sex, professional training, characteristics of work situation and the demographic variables and how they affect the leadership styles and their influence in the school environment.
The subjects for the study were selected from ten secondary public secondary schools in the local government area. The simple random sampling procedure was used to select a total number of one hundred teachers. A twenty-item questionnaire was designed by the researcher.
The instrument was personally administered; t-test and the Pearson product moment correlation were used in testing the four hypotheses for this study. All the hypotheses were accepted or rejected at the 0.05 level of significance.
Findings
The following findings were made from the data collected and analyzed:-
- There was a significant relationship between the leadership styles of principals and teachers’ job performance.
- There was significant difference between the leadership styles of Male and Female principals.
- There was significant relationship between the leadership styles of principals in Urban and Rural areas.
- There was no significant different between the leadership styles of professional and non-professionally trained principals.
Conclusion
Consequent upon the findings, most principals in Sapele Local Government Area exhibited democratic leadership style as perceived by the teachers.
Recommendations
Based on the findings, the following recommendations were made:
- The Delta State Government should implement its pronouncement in professionalizing teaching as a profession. Even though there is no significant difference between their leadership styles, a trained teacher should be made to head a school instead of a non-trained teacher. No teacher has been appointed as a Magistrate or a Mediator in Government hospital. The Government can appoint any graduate to principal a school. This is not too pleasing to those who went through the rigours of teaching practice and practical teaching exercises.
- As a corollary, professionally trained principal should be given more incentive to differentiate them from the non-professionally trained principals.
- Principals in the rural areas should be given more allowances for transportation, responsibility and up-keep allowances. Official quarters should be provided for the principals and teachers alike with some news-items such as radio sets and battery-generated television sets. This is to keep the rural dwellers abreast of latest educational polices.
- Workshops should be organized for female principals periodically to emphasize the fact that no sex is superior to the other and that the principalship is not a permanent office; neither is it a personal seat, as all principals and teachers are birds of passage.
- In addition, Government and spiritual individuals should organize periodic seminars and workshops on leadership styles for school heads to stress the importance of team spirit at the school level.
- Further research should be conducted on the job performance of secondary school teachers with emphasis on the areas of subject specialization such as Economics, Commerce, Agricultural Science, etc.
- Principals should endeavour to meet the needs of their teachers through appropriate communicative network.
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