ASSESSMENT OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRINCIPALS' MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ENUGU STATE

The study ascertained the relationship between principals’ management practices and effective classroom environment in secondary schools in Enugu State. The study was guided by two research questions while two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Correlational survey research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study comprised 295 principals. There was no sampling approach because the population was manageable as at the time of this study. The instrument for data collection was a researcher structured questionnaire titled “Relationship between Principals’ Management Practices and Effective Classroom Environment Questionnaire (RPMPECEQ)”. The instrument was face validated by three experts; two from Department of Educational Management and one from Measurement and Evaluation unit of Department of Mathematics and Computer Education all in Faculty of Education, Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu. The internal consistency of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha statistic which yielded 0.81 for cluster 1 and 0.80 for cluster 2 respectively. The instrument had an overall reliability index of 0.81 which indicated that the instrument was appropriate for use. The research questions were answered using Pearson’s Product Moment Co-efficient, while the null hypotheses were tested using linear regression at 0.05 level of significant. The findings of the study indicated that high positive relationship exists between principals’ time management and effective classroom environment in secondary schools in Enugu State. Also, there was a high positive relationship between principals’ communication style and effective classroom environment in secondary schools in Enugu State. Based on the findings, the study recommended among others that principals should endeavour to regularly observe the aspect of their time management in order to continually provide effective classroom environment