PRINCIPALS' LEADERSHIP STYLES AND TEACHERS' JOB PERFORMANCE IN ADMINISTRATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN DELTA STATE

This study investigated principals’ leadership styles and teachers’ job performance in administration of secondary schools in Delta State. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study which was also guided with four (4) research questions and four (4) hypotheses. Purposive random sampling technique was used to select 493 principals and 4,280 teachers, representing 30% of the 14762 population for the study. A 45-item questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. The questionnaire was structured on a 4-point scale: Very High Extent (VHE) – 4 points, High Extent (HE) – 3 points, Low Extent (LE) – 2 Points, Very Low Extent (VLE) – 1 point. The face and content validity of the instrument was ascertained and to ensure internal consistency, 30 copies of the questionnaire were administered to one (1) principal and 29 teachers at Aguata High School, Aguata, Anambra State, which is outside the scope of this study. The data collected were subjected to Cronbach Alpha which yielded the following reliability coefficient results for the 4 research questions: 1. r = 0.97, 2. r = 0.90, 3. r = 0.95, 4. r = 0.97, with whole reliability = 0.97. A total of 4773 copies of the questionnaire were administered and a total of 4398 were fully completed and returned, indicating 92.14% return rate. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviations. T-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings show that democratic and transactional leadership styles are more accessible and influence teachers’ job performance more positively than autocratic and laissez-faire leadership styles. It was therefore recommended that principals should adopt more of democratic leadership style and only chip in autocratic leadership style when some tough decisions need to be taken.