Principals’ leadership styles influencing students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Mwala sub-county, Machakos County

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of principals’ leadership styles on students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Mwala Sub-county, Machakos County. The objectives of the study were to establish the influence of the principals’ transformational leadership style, transactional leadership style, democratic leadership style, and autocratic leadership style on students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in the Mwala Sub-county. This study used a descriptive survey research design. Target population of the study was all 72 schools, all 72 principals, and all 471 teachers in Mwala Sub-county public secondary schools. Out of the population of 72 schools, 36 schools were chosen through stratified random sampling technique. All the 36 principals of the sampled schools were purposively included in the study. Yamene (2007) formula was used to give a sample of 216 teachers. Proportional allocation method was used to identify a weighted teachers’ sample for each school. Simple random sampling technique was employed to select the participating teachers in each school. The instruments were validated through piloting and by research experts to ascertain content validity while reliability was achieved through piloting using the test-retest reliability technique. Data were coded and entered into Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23.0 for analysis. Descriptive statistics which included frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations were utilized to analyze data. Inferential statistics which involved running correlation analysis at a 0.05 level of significance were employed to test the nature and strength of relationships between variables. The study used tables to present the analyzed results. The results revealed that there was a weak positive but statistically significant correlation between transformational leadership style and students’ academic performance (R=.374, p=.038). The results established that there was a weak positive but statistically significant correlation between transactional leadership style and students’ academic performance (R=.428, p=.016). The results also showed that there was a weak positive but statistically significant correlation between democratic leadership style and students’ academic performance (R=.365, p=.043). Further, the results revealed that there was a weak negative correlation between autocratic leadership style and students’ academic performance which was not statistically significant (R = -.259, p=.160). Based on the findings, the study recommends to the Kenya Institute of Educational Management (KEMI) and the Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC) to regularly in-service teachers on leadership styles; principals to enhance practices associated with transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and democratic leadership practices since they improve academic performance; principals to only minimally and exceptionally use autocratic leadership style in extraordinary circumstances when this style may be extremely necessary.