Principals’ Instructional Leadership in Teacher Professional Development and its Relationship with Students' State Examinations Performance in Bururi Province Schools, Burundi

Purpose: Students who sit for the state examinations in Bururi Province have recently posted unsatisfactory performance. This poor performance could potentially have a severe impact on the educational system and the subsequent transfer from secondary schools to higher education if it is not addressed. The goal of the current research was to explore the principals’ leadership in teacher professional development and its relationship with student’s performance in the state examinations in secondary schools in Bururi Province. Methods: The transformational leadership theory served as the foundation for the present study. The research design for this study was the correlational research design. The target population was public secondary schools in Bururi province and the study involved principals, teachers, and the provincial directors of education. The researcher used a purposive sampling technique to select 11 boarding schools, all the principals, and the 6 provincial directors of education in the study while simple random sampling was adopted to identify teachers who participated in the study. Principals’ and teachers' questionnaires, as well as interview guides for directors of education in Bururi province, were utilized for collecting data. For quantitative data, Pearson Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to identify correlations between the independent and dependent variables in this study. Qualitative data from the interview was analysed thematically. Results: The findings indicated that coordination of teacher professional development had a positive and significant relationship with student performance in the state examination. Conclusion: The study recommends that principals should strengthen activities related to instructional leadership in coordination with teacher professional development.