ABSTRACT

The study examined principals’ leadership techniques for boosting teacher’s instructional delivery in public secondary schools in Abia state, Nigeria. The study specifically determined the extent to which the principals’ leadership techniques such as principals’ paternalistic, transformational, transactional, pacesetting, coaching and servant leadership techniques boost teachers’ instructional delivery in secondary schools. Data for the study were collected using a well-structured and validated questionnaire with seven clusters and 94 items, from 43 principals and 262 teachers of public secondary schools in Abia state, that were randomly selected from the study area. Result of reliability test with Pearson product moment and Cronbach Alpha was 0.84 and 0.83 respectively. Data collected for the study were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as the mean to answer research questions, while t-test was used to test the formulated hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that the leadership techniques were applied in public secondary schools in Abia state to high extent. It equally showed that paternalistic leadership technique, transactional leadership technique, pacesetting leadership technique and coaching leadership technique to high extent boost teachers’ instructional delivery in public secondary schools in Abia state, while principals’ transformational leadership technique and Principals’ servant leadership technique to low extent boost teachers’ instructional delivery in public secondary schools in Abia state. There were significant differences between the mean ratings of principals and teachers on extent principals’ Paternalistic leadership technique, Principals’ transformational leadership technique, Principals’ transactional leadership technique, Principals’ pacesetting leadership technique and Principals’ coaching leadership techniques  respectively boost teachers’ instructional delivery in public secondary schools. The study therefore concludes that Principals’ leadership techniques were applied by principals and they boosted teachers’ instructional delivery in public secondary schools in Abia state. The study based on the findings therefore recommends that stakeholders in the Education sector and State Ministry of Education should organize leadership training/ programmes for principals of public secondary schools, to educate them on the importance and effective application of leadership techniques in secondary school management decisions in order to boost the teachers’ instructional delivery in public secondary schools.