Authentic Leadership Practices Adopted by Principals for Effective Administration of Public Secondary Schools in Anambra State

Abstract

The study investigated authentic leadership practices adopted by principals for effective administration of public secondary school in Anambra State. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised 5,549 respondents of which 263 are principals and 5,286 are teachers in public secondary school in Anambra State. The sample for the study is 832 respondents of which 40 are principals and 792 are teachers drawn using proportionate stratified sampling technique. A researcher-developed instrument titled ‘‘Principals’ Authentic Leadership Practices Questionnaire (PALPQ)’’ was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts of which two were from the Department of Educational Management and Policy, and one in Measurement and Evaluation Unit in the Department of Educational Foundations, all from Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. Cronbach alpha method was used for a test of internal consistency of the instrument which yielded reliability coefficients of 0.79 and 0.81for Clusters I and II respectively with an overall coefficient of 0.80. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed among others that principals adopt internalized moral practices for effective administration of public secondary schools in Anambra State. Further result showed that principals do not adopt relational transparency practices for effective administration of public secondary schools in Anambra State. It was also found that there is no significant difference in the mean ratings of principals and teachers on the internalized moral practices adopted by principals for effective administration of public secondary school in Anambra State. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others, that Post Primary Schools Service Commission should pay regular visits to schools to oversee relational transparency practices and make recommendations that will bring about improvement on school administration.