Leadership Styles, Gender Roles and Institutional Effectiveness: A Comparative Study

Abstract

The present research work was aimed at investigating the effects of leadership styles and gender of the head teachers of the primary and secondary schools. On the basis of leadership styles and similarity in some control variables a total of 60 schools - 30 government primary schools and 30 main stream secondary schools, were selected as study schools. The study requires two categories of sample. Head teachers of the 60 selected schools comprises one category, and a total of 3776 students of class-v and class-x of the selected schools were treated as the second category of sample. Leadership Style Questionnaire (Bhogle, 1969), Head Teachers Opinion Survey Questions (Haque and Elias, 2008), and Documents Survey techniques were used to collect the data. The study was conducted with the following objectives in mind: i) To see the difference between the students of different schools in terms of their academic success under different styles of leadership ii) To compare the academic success of the students of different schools run under the leadership of male and female head teachers iii) To compare the relative effectiveness or different styles or leadership of the school head teachers in terms of students' success and failure. iv) To compare the relative effectiveness of different leadership styles in terms of drop-out rate and rate of classroom attendance. v) To compare the views of the head teachers of primary and secondary schools regarding teachers' duties and responsibilities, school climate, reward and punishment, qualities of teaching, extra curricular activities, community participation, and classroom environment. On the basis of the available Iiterature, personal observation of the researcher, and the objectives of the present investigation following hypotheses were framed: Leadership styles of head teachers will have significant effect on the academic success of the students. ii) Gender of the head teachers will have no effect on the academic success of the students. iii) Attendance rate of the students will be much higher under democratic and autocratic leadership than that of under laissez-faire leadership. iv) Drop-out rate of the students will be lower under democratic and autocratic leadership than that of under laissez-faire leadership. v) Opinion of the primary school head teachers regarding some academic and administrative issues would be different from that of secondary school head teachers. Major findings of the present study were as follows : i) Significant effects of different styles of leadership were found on the academic successes of the students of primary schools (p<.05), secondary schools (p<.00 I), and two types of schools taken together (p<.00 I). ii) Significant effect of gender of the head teachers were also found on the academic success of the students of primary schools (p<.05), secondary schools (p<.00 I), and the two types of schools taken together (p<.05). iii) Classroom attendance rates of the students under autocratic and democratic leadership were found to be higher for primary schools (80%& 76%), for secondary schools (69% & 72%), and for two types of schools taken together (74.5% & 74%) than that of under laissez-faire leadership, where attendance rates were found to be 69% for primary schools, 57% for secondary schools, and 63% for two types of schools taken together respectively. Attendance rates of the students were also found higher under male head teachers (74.5%) than under female head teachers (66.5%). iv) Drop-out rates of the students under democratic and laissez-faire leadership were found to be minimum for primary ( 15% & 12%) and secondary ( 13% & 14%) schools than that of under autocratic leadership, where drop-out rates were 21 % and 18% for primary and secondary schools respectively. I lead teachers of the primary and secondary schools expressed almost similar views on some issues like school and classroom environment, arrangement of co-curricular activities, teaching abilities, performing duties and responsibilities, and seeking community assistance in running schools. But differences of opinion between the head teachers of primary and secondary schools were also found in case of giving reward and punishment to the teachers and students, particularly provision for physical punishment for the students. The findings of the present investigation offer support to the hypotheses in most of the cases, but in some points opposite results were found. finally, it may be concluded that the authorities should take head teachers' styles of leadership into serious consideration while appointing them. Necessary measures should also be taken in developing the quality of the teaching-learning activities by increasing the professional and physical facilities of the schools.