Practices and challenges of female teachers’ Participation in schools leadership public Secondary school in buno bedele zone.

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to examine ‘’ practices and challenges of female teachers’ participation in school leadership in secondary Schools of Buno Bedele Zone.’’ In order to understand the participation of female teachers qualitative data was generated through purposively selected. Data were collected from five women teachers, four women school principals and three woreda education office heads at selected government secondary schools and three women affairs heads of the selected woredas. Three selected district of Education Office heads, and three Women, Youth and Children Affairs office holders were purposefully sampled . The data obtained through interview, informal conversation and focus group discussion were analyzed qualitatively using conceptualization, coding, categorizing and themes. The major finding indicated that lack of roll model, lack of motivation, work load, family responsibility, negative attitude of female teachers‘ and educational institutions do not have transparent selection criteria were found great impact on females‟ participation of school leadership. Lacks of confidence because of the social back ground in the culture of the community in general, females are not leaders; they are followers rather. As a result of lack of confidence, they are not aspired to become leaders. In addition, females do not have opportunities to gain bottom experiences in educational leadership that would help them for further advancement because the school leadership was men dominated in tradition. The study concluded that there is a gap in creating awareness in implementation of policies, rules and regulations in people’s attitude towards women’s secondary school principal ship. This calls for an ambitious interventions on gender disparity in leadership such us engendering leadership through motivating, empowering and involving women in decision making systematically to narrow down the persisting gap as women hold up half the sky.