Administrators’ Innovative Leadership Practices and Teachers’ 21st Century Skills

The study was conducted from January to July 2024 to determine the relationship between the administrators’ innovative leadership practices and teachers’ 21st century skills. A total enumeration involving 36 Administrators and 130 Teachers from the four school campuses was used in the study. A quantitative approach was employed in the study, using an adapted survey as a data gathering method. The collection of data was done through a survey using Microsoft Forms to determine the innovative leadership practices of administrators in the aspects of strategic thinking, innovative thinking, action patterns, and interpersonal skills, and the aspects of learning and innovation skills, information, media, and technology skills, and life and career skills. The descriptive and inferential statistical tools utilized were the Median, Mann-Whitney U Test, Friedman Two-Way ANOVA, and Spearman Rank Correlation Analysis. Results revealed that the extent of innovative leadership practices of administrators as perceived by the teachers is less practiced. However, to administrators’ perception, the extent of innovative leadership practices of administrators is always practiced. This implies a perception gap that reflects a broader organizational culture that is resistant to or slow in adopting innovative leadership practices and a lack of alignment in their understanding and appreciation of innovative leadership practices. On the other hand, the level of teachers’ 21st century skills is ver high as perceived by the teacher participants. Yet, the administrators’ perception of 21st century skills of teachers is on a low level. The divergent perceptions between teachers and administrators suggest a fundamental lack of alignment in their understanding and assessment of the teachers’ 21st century skill levels and with the actual skill levels and needs of the teaching staff. It was statistically determined that there is a significant difference between the perception of the administrators and teachers in the extent of innovative leadership practices of administrators and the level of 21st century skills of teachers. This suggests a lack of shared understanding between administrators and teachers regarding these critical aspects of leadership and teaching competencies and a lack of cohesion and coordination between the two stakeholders on priorities and approaches. Meanwhile, there is a significant difference among the aspects of the extent of innovative leadership practices of administrators and the aspects of the level of 21st century skills to administrators and teachers. The highest measure of the innovative leadership practices of the administrators is interpersonal skills, and the lowest is strategic thinking. Meanwhile, for teachers, the highest measure of 21st century skills is life and career skills, and the lowest is learning and innovation skills. Though there is significant difference on the perception of teachers and administrators, these two groups of participants consistently consider interpersonal skill as the most dominant aspect of innovative leadership practices, while strategic thinking is the least dominant for both groups of participants. The administrators and teachers revealed that there is a significant relationship between the extent of innovative leadership practices of administrators and the level of 21st century skills of teachers. This study encourages that to enhance teachers’ 21st-century skills and infuse innovative leadership practices, there is a need to concentrate on upskilling and reskilling of teachers. Moreover, the study also encourages further qualitative research to delve deeper into the specific aspects contributing to innovative leadership practices and 21st century skills to investigate the root causes, which will help in providing interventions more effectively.