Teachers leadership styles as a correlation of students class participation in basic schools at Ga Central Municipality of Greater Accra Region

Abstract

Leadership styles teachers‟ exhibit within their classrooms cannot be over emphasised in teaching and learning because it has both negative and positive effects on students‟ participation in the classroom. The study therefore, explored teachers‟ leadership styles as a correlation of students‟ class participation in basic schools at Ga Central Municipality. The cross-sectional survey design was adopted for the study. The population comprised all Junior High School teachers and students at Ga Central Municipality with the target and accessible population comprising all public Junior High School teachers and students in the five selected Junior High Schools. Multistage sampling techniques were employed to select one hundred and fifty (150) participants for the study comprising 50 teachers and 100 students. Instrument used for data collection was a structured questionnaire. By submitting the questionnaire to the researcher‟s supervisor for scrutiny, content validity of the instrument was ascertained. Through test-retest method, Chronbach‟s alpha reliability coefficient of 0.78 was obtained. Data collected were analysed employing frequency counts, percentages and pie- charts. The results showed that most of the teachers (78%) employed democratic leadership style in schools. However 72% of the students were of the view that, the teachers adopted autocratic leadership style thus affecting their performance. In addition, it was unleashed by both parties that conducive classroom is crucial for effective classroom interaction. Finally, both parties established a negative impact of leadership styles on classroom participation with regard to exhibiting cold attitudes towards classroom participation circumstances which affect their performance. It was recommended that, school authorities should encourage teachers to adopt innovative ways to ensure full participation of students in classroom activities whereas teachers should therefore adopt different leadership styles to deal with students in and outside the classroom to ensure full participation of students.