Relationship between Principals’ Leadership Styles and Secondary School Teachers’ Job Satisfaction in Nandi South District, Kenya

Abstract

It seems that most of our schools’ administrative problems tend to arise from fundamental conflicts between teachers’ and students’ needs and motives, and the requirements of the school organization. This is because teachers as individuals often personalize their roles and needs in an attempt to have them actualized while on the other hand attempting to mould and fit them into prescribed roles in order to achieve organizational goals. Therefore an understanding of relationships existing between principals’ leadership styles and the teachers’ job satisfaction is critical if these problems are to be overcome. This study was an attempt to contribute in this regard by examining the relationship between leadership styles of principals and teachers’ job satisfaction in Kenyan public secondary schools. The study adopted House’s Path-Goal theory which suggests that the performance, satisfaction, and motivation of a group can be affected by the leadership style in place. Descriptive survey research design was used to gather data from 138 respondents selected from 501 teachers Nandi district using two questionnaires namely; (i) Teachers Questionnaire (TQ) and (ii) Principals Questionnaire (PQ). The TQ were used to collect information on teachers’ perceptions of principals’ leadership style and their level of job satisfaction and commitment to work while the PQ was used to uncover the type of leadership adopted by principals’ administrative practice. The reliability of the instruments was estimated using Cronbach alpha. TQ yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.78 while the PQ yielded 0.83 which were deemed acceptable for research purposes. The data collected was analyzed using frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviation. The Pearson‘s correlation coefficient and t-test were used to establish the relationships between principal’s leadership styles and teachers’ job satisfaction and gender differentials at 0.05 level. This study found that principals’ leadership styles have a great impact on the working atmosphere in a school and consequently the teachers’ job satisfaction. The study also established that the dominant leadership style in Nandi South District was Democratic leadership style and that most teachers were satisfied with their jobs in relation to the leadership style in place.