Abstract

This study was designed to find out Principals’ leadership styles and teachers job effectiveness in government technical colleges in Fako Division South West Region of Cameroon. Specifically, the study sought to determine the influence of principals’ autocratic, democratic, laissez faire and transformational leadership styles on teachers’ job effectiveness.

This study was anchored on the contingency theory, transformational theory, Abraham Maslow hierarchy of needs, and Path Goal theory. The survey research design was used in this study .that is instrumentation which include interview and questionnaire as well as longitudinal survey design.

The sample population for the study consisted of 247 teachers and 7 principals. Principals were selected using the purposive sampling technique while the teachers were selected using the simple random sampling technique. Two hundred and forty seven open and closed ended questionnaires were distributed to teachers and an interview guide conducted on seven principals.

Data gathered from the respondents on principals’ leadership styles and teachers job effectiveness were statistically analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage counts) while the spearman rho test correlation coefficient was used to test the research hypotheses formulated in the study.

The findings of the study showed that there is a significant and negative relationship between autocratic leadership style and teachers’ job effectiveness. The negative sign of the correlation value implies that autocratic leadership style significantly and negatively affects teachers’ job effectiveness.

Findings equally affirm a significant and positive relationship between democratic leadership style and teachers’ effectiveness. The positive sign of the correlation value implies that democratic leadership style significantly and positively affects teachers’ effectiveness. However, when the relationship between laissez faire leadership style and teachers’ effectiveness was examined, findings showed that there is a significant and negative relationship between laissez faire leadership style and teachers’ effectiveness.

The negative sign of the correlation implies that laissez faire leadership style significantly and negatively affects teachers’ effectiveness. Lastly, transformational leadership style and teachers’ effectiveness revealed that, there is a significant and positive relationship between transformational leadership style and teachers’ effectiveness.

The positive sign of the correlation implies that transformational leadership style significantly and positively affects teachers’ effectiveness. Based on the findings of this study, it was generally recommended that principals should not hold on to one or two leadership styles. They should adopt many and each should be used depending on the situation at hand and the kind of teachers they are dealing with.

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