School Principals’ Leadership Behavior and Teachers’ Commitment in Secondary Schools of Buno Bedele Zone

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess principals’ leadership behaviors and tachers’ commitment in Government Secondary Schools of Buno bedele Zone,South West Ethiopia. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, a descriptive survey design was used. The sample of the study consisted of 198 participants from six different secondary schools of Buno Bedele Zone. School principals, supervisors and teachers participated in the study. Two standardized questionnaires i.e. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire which was developed by Bass and Avolio (1995) and the Three-Component Model (TCM) of Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) developed by (Meyer & Allen, 1991) were used to gather data. The data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages, mean and standard deviations were used while inferential statistics used were a Pearson correlation and regression analysis. The t-test analysis showed that school leaders and teachers have different perceptions on leadership styles of school leaders and teachers. The findings of the study showed that the most prominent leadership style in the Secondary Schools of Buno Bedele Zone is transformational leadership (M=2.65, SD= .61) followed by Transactional leadership with (M=2.22, SD=.52). Of the three leadership styles, respondents rated the least was the laissez-faire leadership style (M=1.73, SD =.79). The results also reveal that affective commitment(M=4.08 SD = 0.81) is dominant among staff members in Secondary Schools of Buno Bedele Zone. The two-tailed correlation analysis further revealed that there has a positive and significant relationship between transformational leadership behaviors and both teachers’ commitment variables (affective (r =.487, p = .000 < 0.05) and continuance (r= .463, p= .000 < 0.05). However, normative commitment with (r= .13, p > .078) has no relationship with transformational leadership. Transactional leadership behavior had a weak but significant and positive relationship with affective commitments(r= .261, p< 0.05). But, continuance and normative commitments had a strong and significant relationship with (r= .565, p< 0.05) and (r= .451, p< 0.05) respectively. However, the correlation analysis result of Laissez-faire leadership style indicated that there was found to be significantly and negatively associated with teachers’ affective commitment (r= - .165, p < .05). The regression findings indicated that transaction leadership style being responsible for 38.07 of variation in teachers commitment; whereas, 30.6% and 2.2% variances in teachers’ commitment due to the impact of transformational and Laissez-faire leadership styles respectively. From the results, it was possible to conclude that both transformational and transactional leadership behaviors were positively related with affective, continuance and normative commitments whereas laissez-fair leadership behavior has found to have a positive and significant relationship with normative commitments, but it has a very weak and negative correlation with affective organizational commitment in Government secondary schools of Buno Bedele Zone. Finally, the study recommended that both transformational and transactional leadership behaviors play a more important role in developing and improving affective, continuance and normative commitment than the laissez-faire leadership behaviors, the secondary school leaders need to strive to maintain transformational and transactional leadership behaviors as the organization can easily and effectively achieve its organizational goals through committed principals and teachers.