Empowering Public Secondary School Principals to Perform Instructional Leadership Roles in the Amhara Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

This Thesis draws on quantitative methods survey research conducted to examine how public secondary school principals can be empowered to perform instructional leadership roles in the Amhara region, Ethiopia. The units of analysis were 358 teachers and 76 principals. Teachers and principals were selected using random and convenience sampling methods respectively. Detailed reviewing of related literature to give profound insights about the research problems and objectives, a structured questionnaire made up of categorical and scaled question were included as tools of data collection. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), Version 20. The study identified that principals credited much of their empowerment to access for resources and support and attributed much of their perceptions to themselves. Measures of structural empowerment; psychological empowerment; and leadership behaviour have significant relationships with effective instructional leadership role performance of principals. Inadequate top management support, lack of awareness, absence of clear regulations on ways and tools of empowerment and insufficient funds, undue interference of top leaders, intimidation of principals and implementing unnecessary reshuffle of school principals were identified as major challenges of empowering principals. From the structural empowerment (access to support and opportunity for resources); psychological empowerment (meaning); and leadership behaviour (delegation of authority, skill development, and coaching for innovative performance) had been significant predictors of empowerment.Moreover, principals experience more empowered when they have more sociopolitical support from top management, subordinates, peers, superiors and even customers. The researcher also recommended that principals be should provided with professional freedom to effectively perform instructional leadership roles. Therefore, policy makers are required to formulate and implement empowerment process model for principals of public secondary schools. Finally, this study challenges all leaders to rethink on how they can empower school principals to effectively perform instructional leadership roles in the Amhara regional state of Ethiopia.