Re-examination of the Influence of Contemporary Leadership Styles on Senior Secondary School Management in Rivers State

Abstract

The study was carried out to examine the contemporary leadership styles on senior secondary school management in Rivers State. Two research questions and two corresponding hypotheses guided the study. This study adopted an analytical descriptive survey research design. A sample of 364 teachers who responded to the instrument was determined using Krejcie and Morgan's table. The sample was drawn through a cluster random sampling technique, using the three senatorial districts in Rivers State as the clusters. The data collection instrument was a structured instrument tagged "Contemporary Leadership Styles on Senior Secondary School Management Questionnaire (CLSSSMQ)". The instrument was validated and adjudged reliable with a reliability index of 0.83. Mean with standard deviation was used to answer the research questions, while z-test was adopted for testing the two null hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that there is no significant difference between the mean scores of respondents in urban and rural areas on the extent principals’ transactional and transformational leadership styles influence senior secondary school management in Rivers State. It was recommended that principals and other categories of staff should adopt a transformational leadership style to broaden followers' mindsets through training and skills development to understand the requisites for leadership and adopt them to solve personal and national problems, and that national and state administrative management evaluate various techniques to improve the balance of both leadership orientations as needed, with the goal of successfully directing them to achieve their goals and objectives