Leadership Styles of Public Secondary School Heads in Goa District, Philippines

Great school leaders had common characteristics but their leadership styles differed, and at times, they even switched to other styles according to the need. Schools needed leaders with a vision of improving school’s learning environment within a well-functioning school-based management system. This paper presented the leadership styles of public secondary school heads in Goa, Camarines Sur, Philippines. This paper described their leadership orientation, explained the extent of acceptance of their leadership styles, enumerated the best leadership practices, and explained the differences on the leadership orientation. This study employed descriptive methods and quantitatively obtained the data from 127 public secondary school teachers of Goa District, Division of Camarines Sur, Philippines. An adopted survey questionnaire was utilized, consisting of demographic profile, leadership styles indicators and best practices of school heads. The samples were randomly selected through stratified random sampling. Findings revealed that public secondary school heads in Goa district were “Task Oriented”. The level of acceptance to this leadership style was marked as “acceptable”. Moreover, the study showed that “communicative” was the best leadership practice of public secondary school heads. However, a statistical difference among the leadership styles was also found. Researchers concluded that effective communication was among the best practices of school heads that teachers liked the most. These practices promoted continual growth both for schools and teachers. Considering the differences in leadership styles of school heads, the researchers, with affirmations from majority of the public school teachers, strongly recommended that school heads should have considered the contingency approach to leadership, meaning leadership style should always match to the situation.