Participative leadership practice in junior high schools and actions to improve the practice : a case study of Sekyere south district, Ghana

Abstract

Gyasi, Kwame. 2015. Participative leadership practice in junior high schools and actions to improve the practice: a case study of Sekyere south district, Ghana Master's Thesis in Education. University of Jyväskylä. Department of Education

Participative leadership practice is seen as the kind of school leadership which recognizes parents’ contribution and teachers’ ability and talents in leadership by sharing with them roles and responsibilities in the school administrative process. The ultimate idea behind participative leadership practice, is to achieve school effectiveness through collaborative effort and joint decision-making involving headmasters, teachers and parents. It is believed that leadership comprising headmasters, teachers and parents in the junior high schools has the potential to improve and develop the schools especially, when there is common interest from the people involved. This study aimed at finding how the participative leadership practice was done and what should be done to improve upon it. A quantitative study was undertaken in 30 junior high schools in Sekyere East District of Ashanti Region, Ghana. Three sets of questionnaires, which were based on the research questions, were administered to three groups of participants (headmasters, teachers, and parents) to collect the data for the study. Furthermore, SPSS Software was used to analyze the data. Specifically, descriptive, cross-tabulation and Chi-square test were employed to measure the items in the data. Finally, the study revealed that the headmasters collaborated and jointly made decisions with the teachers and the parents in the schools through participative leadership practice. It was also found that, the headmasters, teachers and parents accepted that each of them should perform some identified roles in order to improve upon the practice.