Effective Leadership Conducive to Generation of Academic Performance in Schools

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to understand and compare two schools in relation to how effective leadership functions (instructional and transformational leadership) may have been utilized to arrive at differential academic outputs in schools. Towards this end, an exceptionally performing and under-performing school was chosen from within the same socio-economic context with a view to understand how instructional and transformational leadership could result in generating optimal academic performance. These selected schools are government owned and thus, receive similar treatment in terms of funding, control, commitment, management and control, etc. Therefore a major research question: How do selected leadership functions bring about generation of differential student’s exceptional academic performance in schools? Utilizing the qualitative research approach, data was collected from internal key role players (otherwise referred to School Leadership Team [SLT]) from two selected schools: one exceptional performing and the other, underperforming. Participants in the study are; Principals, Vice-principals and Heads of Department (HODs) from the two schools. I utilised one-on-one semi-structured interview, observations and document review to obtain rich data towards providing answers to the puzzle of the study. Findings among others indicate that monitoring, modelling, and internally funded training and development of teachers, ensured effective instructional delivery and up-date of knowledge in the teaching skills; and subject knowledge update of teachers in the exceptionally performing school, which impacted on student’s performance in the exceptionally performing school, compared to the exceptionally underperforming school.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p1868