Abstract
Colleges across the world share a common goal of wanting to improve academic performance of students. In this era of culpability, the pressure for principals to improve students' performance has increased. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the best leadership style adopted by principals of vocational colleges in Kenya. Lecturers in selected vocational colleges were issued with a modified Bass's multi-factor leadership questionnaire (MLQ) to aid the data collection process. Structural equation model (SEM) approach was used to test a model that measures principals' best leadership style on learning outcomes. The study established that principals practiced more transactional leadership. In addition, transactional leadership style significantly and positively influenced learning outcomes. The findings have a variety of implications to vocational training and future research direction.
TopIntroduction
Background of the Study
The ever increasing global pressure to produce excellent students and future superior workers led many countries to push institutions of higher learning towards improvement in student performance. Kenya has felt this increased pressure as demonstrated through the Education For All (EFA) Goal Number 3 that requires learning needs of all young people and adults to be met through unbiased access to suitable learning and life skills programs (Simiyu, 2009). In addition, accrediting agencies like Technical Vocational Education and Training Authority (TVETA) have been forced to revise the criteria for assessing vocational colleges in order to account for student learning and development (Ferej, Kitainge, & Ooko, 2012). The Ministry of Education has also not been left behind in that it has introduced several measures to improve quality of student learning in vocational colleges: performance contract, quality management systems and staff appraisal on termly basis (Malechwanzi, Shen, & Mbeke, 2016).
These changes have made the role of principals to become more complex and challenging especially with the emergence of 21st century learners. For this reason, researchers in education have continued to search for better leadership styles that can be adopted by school principals in a bid to improve student learning. After all, what is in the public domain is that principals can make a difference to what students gain at school. I guess this sentiment is true because when schools perform poorly, principals find themselves in hot soup. Whether such opinions hold waters or not is the task of this study to justify by evidence. However, researchers have identified an effective educational leader as one who has the ability to develop the capacity of a school through staff and students motivation to promote learning (Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2011). Leaders of this calibre are determined by their followers not themselves (Smith, Bhindi, Hansen, Riley & Rall, 2008).
Research on school leadership has demonstrated the link between principal’s leadership types and student learning outcomes (Witziers, Bosker, & Krüger, 2003). While studies on effective school leadership and school outcomes appear to be relatively simple and open in theory, in practice it is difficult and inconsistent (Ibrahim & Al-Taneiji, 2013). The reason being that the field of leadership is full of mainly descriptive studies about effective leadership that are rarely tracked with sufficient rigor to find out their impact on school achievement (Storey, 2004). Research on principal’s leadership provides insight into what constitutes a great leader and if it does then education could modify the leadership training for principals in schools. This study therefore seeks to examine the best leadership style practiced by principals of vocational colleges in Kenya and relate the identified leadership style with learning outcomes.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Contingent Reward: This is a motivation-based system that is used to reward those that meet their identified goals by providing positive reinforcement for a job well done.
Management by Exception: This is a style of business management that focuses on identifying and handling cases that deviate from the standard.
Latent Variables: These are variables that are not directly observed but are rather inferred through a mathematical model from other variables that are directly measured called the observed variables.
Vocational College: This is a post-secondary educational institution designed to provide technical skills required to perform the tasks of a particular job.
Longitudinal Data: This is the process of collecting sample observations from a larger population over a given time period.
Cross-Sectional Study: This is a study that makes comparison of sample observations from a population at a single point in time and the data obtained is called serial data.
Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire: These are set of questions that measures a broad range of leadership types from passive leaders, to leaders who give contingent rewards to followers, to leaders who transform their followers into becoming leaders themselves.
College Principal: This is the chief executive and the chief academic officer of a university or college especially in certain parts of the commonwealth countries.
Structural Equation Model: Is a series of statistical methods used in non-experimental data that allow complex relationships between one or more independent variables and one or more dependent variables.