Management style and behavior as related to leadership and instructional supervisory competence among school principals: Towards the development of administrative and instructional supervision guide

Abstract

This survey-correlational research aimed at determining the management style and behavior as related to leadership and instructional supervisory competence among the school principals of the Schools Division of Iloilo. This study was conducted on June 2016. The participants of the study were the 274 school principals and 1,450 teachers, from both elementary and secondary schools in the province of Iloilo. After determining proportionally the number of participants using the Slovin's Formula, they were identified using the fishbowl method of random sampling. The data-gathering instruments utilized to gather the data needed for the investigation were the Allan J. Rowe and associates' test (1988) to identify the dominant management style among the school principals; the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) by James M. Kouzes/Barry Z. Posner to determine their management behavior, and the rating scale adopted/adapted from the National Competency-based Standards for School Heads TDNA Assessment Tools. All these data gathering instruments were subjected to reliability testing. Results revealed that the questionnaire for leadership competence has the Reliability Coefficient of .9658, for leadership competence .9576, and for instructional competence .9522. The statistical tools used were the mean, frequency count, percentage, rank, and standard deviation for descriptive analysis and the one-way analysis of variance, Pearson's rand eta correlation test all set at .05 level of significance for inferential analysis. Study results revealed that the dominant management style among the school principals was behavioral, while the leadership behavior they mostly exhibited was enabling others to act. However from the perspective of the teachers, the dominant leadership behavior among the school principals was challenging the process. School principals assessed themselves competent in the aspect of leadership and instructional competence while the teachers viewed them as highly competent. Moreover, the school principals did not differ significantly in their leadership and instructional competence when they were grouped as to their educational preparation and years as administrators. However, a significant relationship existed between principals' self-assessed leadership behavior and management style. A no significant relationship was noted between the principals' self- assessed leadership behavior and management style as assessed by the teachers. Similarly, no significant relationship also existed between the principals' leadership competence and management styles both as assessed by themselves and by the teachers. Moreover, no significant relationships also existed between the principals' self- assessed instructional competence and their management style and likewise between the principals' self-assessed instructional competence and their management style as assessed by the teachers. Finally, a significant relationship existed between the teachers' assessment of their principals' instructional competence and the principals' self-assessed management style.