Relationship Between Principals’ Transformational Leadership Behaviors and Teachers’ Work Ethics in Public Secondary Schools in Anambra State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study sought to establish the correlation between principals’ transformational leadership behaviors and teachers’ working ethics in secondary schools in Anambra State, Nigeria. Two research questions guided the study and two hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study is a correlation research. The population of the study comprised 6,382 teachers from the 261 state government owned secondary schools in the state. The sample which is 10.8% of the population was made up of 689 teachers from 131 out of the 261 secondary schools. The sample was composed using simple random sampling technique. A researcher developed instrument titled “Principals’ transformational leadership behaviours and teachers’ work Ethics Questionnaire (PTLBTWE) which were validated by experts were used for data collection. Reliability indices of 0.82 and 0.84 respectively for the questionnaires were obtained using Cronbach Alpha. Out of 689 copies of the questionnaire distributed, 660 copies representing 95.8% return rate where duly completed, retrieved and used for data analysis. Data were analyzed using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation both for answering the research questions and to test the hypotheses. The result of the study indicated that there is a positive and significant correlation between principals’ transformational leadership behaviours and teachers’ working ethics. This suggests the need for principals to adopt transformational leadership style so as to improve and increase the leadership behaviours/ roles at school in order to make an improvement in work environment either for job satisfaction which will have effects to the improvement of teacher’s attitude to work.