Leadership Styles, Gender of Principals and Teachers' Performance in Ikenne Local Government Area Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Literature reveals that teachers in low income countries like Nigeria are lacking in discipline and regularity, commitment to duty and in motivation leading to poor teacher performance. A lot of factors are implicated in this phenomenon including quality of leadership in schools. The question that comes to mindis; What is the role of principals in the performance of teachers in schools? Hence, a study as this on the leadership styles, gender of principals and teachers' performance in Ikenne Local Government Area, Ogun State. Descriptive survey research design method was adopted. The instrument used for data collection was questionnaire. By the way of total enumeration twenty-eight principals (20 males;8 females), teachers of Christian Religious Studies (CRS) and CRS students in secondary schools in the L.G.A, were sampled for the study. The statistics used for data analysis included, percentile distribution, mean values, Pearson Product Moment Correlation, Simple Linear Multiple Regress and ANOVA.

The findings of the study showed that; there were more male principals in the secondary schools in Ikenne LGA than female principals, most of the principals used the democratic leadership style, the teacher's performance was rated high by the students, democratic leadership style more than autocratic and laisezz faire style is significantly related to teacher performance and is also has the greatest impact on teacher performance. The gender of principals was also found to be related to teacher's performance. The study recommended that more female teachers should be given principal leadership roles in the secondary schools, leadership training and development of teachers should be strengthened, democratic leadership style should be emphasized and encouraged for optimum performance of teachers in secondary schools, and that supervision of principals in both public or government secondary schools and private schools is necessary to moderate their leadership style for optimum performance of teachers.