| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of head teachers’
leadership styles on students’ discipline in Kericho Sub-County, Kericho County.
Specifically, the study sought to establish the influence of autocratic leadership
style, democratic leadership style, laissez-faire leadership style, transactional
leadership style and transformational leadership style on students’ discipline. This
study was anchored on the Contingency Theory of Leadership, developed by
Fiedler (1964) cited in (Cole, 2002). The study used descriptive survey design to
explore the influence of head teachers’ leadership styles on students’ discipline.
Target population consisted of 32 head teachers, 330 teachers and a total of 12750
students in Kericho Sub-County. Mugenda and Mugenda (2003) sampling
procedure was used to determine the sample size. Sample size of 10% was
utilized in obtaining 3 schools with 33 teachers that were used for piloting study.
For students, however, five (5) were purposively picked from each of the 3
schools taking part in the piloting study. For the main study, 30% of the total
population was used to select 9 head teachers and 99 teachers. For students,
however, purposive sampling technique was applied (Best & Kahn, 2006) to
select 10 students from each sampled school. Hence, from the 9 schools, 90
students took part in the main study. Head teachers’ questionnaires, teachers’
questionnaires, students’ questionnaires and question guided interviews for head
teachers were used to collect data. Content validity was used whereby research
tools were presented to university supervisors and the panel members. Reliability
of the questionnaires was done through piloting and test retest method. The study
yielded data that required both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Quantitative
results of data analysis were presented mainly in frequencies and percentages in
table format. From the findings of the study, it was established that the common
discipline problems experienced in school are examination cheating (37%), drug
abuse (17%) and absenteeism (25%). Findings also indicate that democratic
leadership style has a great influence on students’ discipline in public secondary
schools. Teachers indicated that there is need for head teachers to use democratic
leadership (62.5%) besides transformational (50%) where discipline should be
positive and constructive. It was also established that autocratic leadership was
exercised in schools by the head teachers. From the results obtained a majority of
the teachers disagree (75.0%) that the autocratic leadership style is necessary in
order to enable people to work as expected. Besides, other head teachers exercised
laissez-faire leadership where they always permitted members to take it easy in
their work (77.8%). The study recommends that head teachers and teachers
should adopt democratic leadership style that is was liked by a majority.
Dictatorship can affect students’ discipline and has always led to unrests in
schools. Given the scope and limitations of this study, the researcher recommends
a replica of this study to be conducted in other sub-counties in Kenya. Besides,
other studies closely related this study to be done in order to establish whether
there was any kind of relationship between students’ discipline and the leadership
style in other public secondary schools in other Counties in Kenya. | en_US |
