Leadership Styles Of Secondary School Heads: Teachers’ Perceptions - A Case Of Kondoa District

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to examine the leadership styles practiced by secondary school heads working in Kondoa District. Specifically, the study aimed at understanding how Kondoa District secondary school teachers perceived the way their heads apply Situational Leadership (SL) styles. Four research questions guided the study: (1) How do school heads understand leadership styles? (2) What are the SL styles employed by the school heads as perceived by the teachers? (3) What are teachers‟ perceptions about their heads‟ ability in practicing the perceived SL styles? (4) What factors cause the school heads to employ different leadership styles? The study employed a qualitative multiple case study design, whereby a total of 76 participants from ten secondary schools were selected as a sample. A Simple random sampling was used to select 72 secondary school teachers, whereas four school heads were obtained through purposive criterion sampling. Interview and survey methods were used to collect the data. Qualitative-content analysis and descriptive analysis were employed to analyze the research questions. The findings revealed that school heads were familiar with leadership styles. Participative style was observed to be practiced much more than other three SL styles. Two factors, namely teachers’ accountability and cooperation, were viewed to be the grounds for such styles to be adopted. Also, from the findings it was observed that some of school heads were task oriented while others were people oriented and the flexible heads performed better than inflexible heads. Lastly, several recommendations are provided by this study to policy makers, practitioners, and researchers.