Verma, Jyoti. (2016). Effectiveness of Educational Leadership in Relation to Gender and Style: An Explorative Study. Unpublished. Ph.D., Education. Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya.
The main objectives of the study were:
Objective 1: To examine whether perception of the leadership effectiveness of higher secondary school principals are influenced by the gender of both the principals and the teachers for whom they lead.
Objective 2: To study the leadership effectiveness of higher secondary school principals with respect to their personal and demographic variables.
Objective 3: To examine whether perception of leadership styles of higher secondary school principals are influenced by gender of both the principal and the teachers for whom they lead.
Objective 4: To study the relationship between leadership styles and leadership effectiveness of higher secondary school principals.
Objective 5: To study the sex role identification of higher secondary school principals with respect to their gender, leadership styles, and leadership effectiveness.
Objective 6: To identify whether any stereotypes related to leadership and gender prevail among the teachers and parents.
Objective 7: To explore the leadership barriers faced by women school principals, particularly because of their gender, and their ways of overcoming these barriers.
In order to analyze the above stated objectives of the study, the following null hypotheses were formulated for the testing-
Null Hypothesis 1.1: There is no significant-difference in the teachers’ perception of leadership effectiveness of women and men school principals.
Null Hypothesis 1.2: There is no significant-difference in the male and female teachers’ perception of leadership effectiveness of their school principals.
Null Hypothesis 1.3: There is no significant influence of gender of both the principals and the teachers in the teachers’ perception of leadership effectiveness of their school principals.
Null Hypothesis 2: There is no significant difference in the leadership effectiveness of higher secondary school principals with respect to their caste, age, locality of schools, type of school management, computer proficiency, type of family, type of spouse, in- service training experience, and academic qualification.
Null Hypothesis 3.1: There is no significant difference between the women and men school principals on the self perception of their transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles.
Null Hypothesis 3.2: There is no significant difference in the transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles of their women and men school principals, as perceived by their teachers.
Null Hypothesis 3.3: There is no significant difference between male and female teachers’ perception of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles of their school principals.
Null Hypothesis 3.4: There is no significant influence of gender of both the principal and the teachers in the teachers’ perception of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles of their school principals.
Null Hypothesis 3.5: There is no significant-difference in the principals self and their teachers’ perception of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership style of the school principal.
Null Hypothesis 4: There is no significant relationship between various dimensions of leadership styles and leadership effectiveness of higher secondary school principals.
Null Hypothesis 5.1: There is no significant association between sex role identification of higher secondary school principals and their gender.
Null Hypothesis 5.2: There is no significant association between sex role identification of higher secondary school principals and their transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership style.
Null Hypothesis 5.3: There is no significant association between sex role identification of higher secondary school principals and their leadership effectiveness.
A total 68 higher secondary schools were selected by using random number table. Further, four teachers (two male and two female) were randomly selected, from each selected schools. Thus, a total 272 teachers and 68 higher secondary school principals were selected as the sample of the study. Beside this, to select the respondents (e.g. women principals, teachers and parents) for the semi-structured interviews, the non probability convenient sampling technique was applied. And only those woman principals, teachers, and parents of the students were selected, who were willing to participate in the study and provide the required information for the present study. Finally, a total 10 woman principals, 22 school teachers (among them 12 male and 10 female) and 22 parents of students (among them 15 male and 07 female) were selected as the respondents for conducting the semi-structured interview.
The following three tools were employed by the researcher for measuring variables of the study.
1. Leadership Effectiveness Scale (LES) developed and standardized by Haseen Taj in the year 2010.
2. The Indian adaptation of Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ Form 5x-Short) translated by Surendra Nath Dubey in the year 2005.
3. Bem Sex-Role Inventory initially developed by Sandra Bem in the year 1974, its translated and adopted version was used.
In addition to these three tools, three separate semi-structured interview schedules were prepared by the researcher, one each for principals, teachers, and parents, respectively. The purpose of this semi-structured interview schedule was to explore possible prevalence of stereotypes related to leadership and gender among teachers and parents, if any, and to explore the barriers of leadership task faced by woman principals. In spite of this, a personal demographic information sheet was also prepared by the researcher to get background information of the respondents.
The nature of present study was descriptive in nature and the present piece of research demands to apply both quantitative and qualitative methods in order to carry out the study. Quantitative method was used to compute the significance difference and relationship between variables, and generalize the findings of study. On the other hand, qualitative method was used to explain and elaborate issues, challenges, possibilities related to educational leadership in various contexts. For this, initially a survey was conducted to identify the leadership style, effectiveness and sex-role identification of higher secondary school principals and along with this; simultaneously the multiple case studies were conducted by the researcher to explore the leadership barriers faced by women higher secondary school principals, particularly because of their gender, and their ways of overcoming these barriers. Further, analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data was done separately by the researcher and mixing of these quantitative and qualitative data occurred at the data interpretation phase.
The following statistical techniques were used to analyze the quantitative objectives of the study:
Coefficient of correlation was calculated to find out the relationship between leadership styles and leadership effectiveness school principals.
One Way ANOVA was used to analyze the influence of both the principal and the teacher gender on the teacher perception of the leadership effectiveness and leadership styles of their school principals.
The t-test was used to find out the significant difference between the variables under study.
Chi-square test was used to find out the association among sex role identification, leadership styles and leadership effectiveness of school principals.
The qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interview schedule were analyzed with the help of inductive data analysis of the Strauss and Corbin (1998) steps for sequentially coding and grouping subsequent codes were followed by the researcher.
The major findings of the study are as follows:
Teachers’ perception of leadership effectiveness and leadership style of their school principals were significantly influenced by gender of both the principals and the teachers’ for whom they lead. Further, leadership effectiveness of higher secondary school principals were differ significantly with respect to their caste, age, computer proficiency, in-service training experience, and educational qualification. However, locality of school, type of management, type of family, and type of spouse did not make any significant difference in the leadership effectiveness of higher secondary school principals.
There was statistically significant association found between sex role identification of higher secondary school principals and their leadership effectiveness whereas there was statistically non-significant association found between sex role identification of higher secondary school principals and their transformational, transactional and laissez-fare leadership style and gender.
Teachers and parents have perceived their women and men principals in a different ways, but this does not shows that one sex is better than other. They expressed that women principals still face some of the gender and leadership challenges, and women principals use different leadership style than men principals. They expressed that women principals still face conflict between home and job responsibilities, mobility problems (school far-away from the home), subordinate teachers; especially male teachers do not support them, the handling of adolescent boys, and lack of support from higher authority, lack of educational opportunities. The parents of the students expressed that women principals are better for their students because they can better handle the problems of both boys and girls students. Overall teachers and parents positively perceived women as a school principal, and their leadership attributes and qualities.
With respect to gender differences in the leadership style of higher secondary school principals, majority of respondents teacher and parents accepted that both women and men principals organizing school activities in the similar way. Some of respondent teachers, both male and female teachers belief that having a women principal in the schools have some additional advantages, like they batter understand the problems of staff and students, they are more interested to organizing cultural and co-curricular activities in the schools, they are more focused on the cleanness of school environment and they are more concerns for teen agers girl students personal problems. Opposite to these, respondent teachers’ belief that men principals can better handle the administrative activity like supervision, more controlling power, quick decision making power, and they are more disciplinary focused and not too strict. Some of respondent teacher belief that men principals can batter handle the adolescent boys, but for girls reverse is true.
Majority of respondent women principal agreed that they were managing their schools perfectly and better than men principals. However, some of them also said that they faced problem in managing day to day activity of their schools to some extent. The barriers, they experienced, can be classified into following major themes; cultural belief and gender stereotype, struggles with balancing between family and work, encouragement and support, administrative and work responsibility, isolation and marginalization, leadership styles and personal qualities and lack of training and educational opportunities.
On the basis of analysis and findings of the study, following implication of the study is as follows:
There is significant gender difference was found in the leadership effectiveness of higher secondary school principals. Therefore, special in-service training programmes need to be organised for the higher secondary school principals and preference should be given to the woman principals.
In the present study gender difference was found on the perception of transformational leadership style among higher secondary school principals, however significant gender difference was found on the perception of transactional and Laissez-faire leadership style of higher secondary school principals. Both transformational and transactional leadership styles are important for organizational effectiveness. Therefore, comprehensive transformational and transactional leadership styles training programmes should be organised for both men and woman school principals for making them effective leaders.
The finding of study shows that there is significant difference found in the leadership effectiveness of higher secondary school principals with respect to their computer proficiency, in-service training experience, teaching experiences and principalship experiences. Hence, these factors should be considered during the time of recruitment as a school principal.
It is expected that the results of this study may help to shed light on the under-representation of women in secondary school leadership roles in India and to provide some of directions that could be pursued to address this imbalance. Results may also provide an indication of what additional steps need to be taken to address teachers’ motivation for pursuing the leadership roles. For authorities the results may be used for policy revision within the Indian educational system.
The finding of this study also suggested that women should have a clear understanding of the challenges what they have been facing in the school system. These challenges includes cultural belief and gender stereotype, struggles with balancing between family and work, encouragement and support, administrative and work responsibility, isolation and marginalisation, leadership styles and personal qualities and lack of training and educational opportunities. Therefore, prior to pursuing careers in educational administration, women should have a clear understanding to sort-out these challenges and be sure that their families understand the time factor and emotional stress inherent in the field of educational leadership, as a result of all these they become effective leaders.
Keyword(s): Educational leadership, gender difference in leadership style and effectiveness , gender related barriers for women principals, gender stereotype about women and men principals