ETHICAL LEADERSHIP PRACTICES OF PRINCIPALS FOR TEACHERS’ EFFECTIVENESS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

This study investigated ethical leadership practices of principals for teachers’ effectiveness in public secondary schools in Anambra State, Nigeria. Four research questions guided this study, and four hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised 267 principals and 7,027 teachers in the 267 public secondary schools in Anambra State. The sample for this study consisted of 797 respondents made up of 103 principals and 694 teachers drawn using proportionate stratified random sampling technique.  A Researchers developed questionnaire titled “Ethical Leadership Practices of Principals for Teachers’ Effectiveness Questionnaire (ELPPTEQ)’’ was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts, two from the Department of Educational Management and Policy and one expert from Measurement and Evaluation Unit in the Department of Educational Foundations, all in the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. In order to test for the reliability of the instrument, the data collected were analyzed using Cronbach Alpha to measure the internal consistency of the instruments. The data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and t-test to test the hypotheses. Based on the findings of the study, it was concluded that there is strong agreement across all areas of ethical leadership practices (communicative, climatic, decisional, and behavioral) for principals' roles in improving teachers' effectiveness. Furthermore, there is no significant difference in the views of principals and teachers on these ethical leadership practices, suggesting alignment in perceptions. It was recommended that Anambra state ministry of education should encourage principals to adopt ethical leadership style since teachers in Anambra state unanimously agree that it led to their job effectiveness, and that ethical leadership qualities should be included as one of criteria for appointment of principals in secondary schools in Anambra State.