TEACHERS’ SELF-WORTH, LEADERSHIP APPROACHES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL LEARNERS IN KAKAMEGA COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

Teachers play a very important role in making the student think and act in productive ways to enhance their learning and general academic performance. They are also charged with the responsibilities of leadership management and improving learner’s performance which requires appropriate leadership approaches. Education standards in Kakamega County have been of low performance compared to the neighbouring counties of Bungoma, Vihiga, Uasin-Gishu, Siaya and Nandi. Appropriate leadership approaches to academic excellence will definitely have an impact of good results which touches on the teacher and his/her self-worth to positively influence good performance in our schools. The purpose of this study is to establish the effect of teacher’s self-worth; leadership approaches their influence on academic performance of secondary school learners in Kakamega County, Kenya. The objectives of this study were to ascertain the level to which teacher’s self-worth affect learner’s academic performance; establish the extent to which transformational leadership approach affects learner’s academic performance; determine the degree to which instructional leadership approach influences learner’s academic performance and find out the relationship between democratic leadership approaches and learner’s academic performance. This study adopted theory of transformational leadership, contingency theory of leadership and self-determination theory. Positivism was used as the research paradigm. The study adopted the non-experimental research design which is the ex-post-facto survey research design and correlation research design. The population sample was 385 secondary schools with 770 class teachers and 23,100 form three students. Out of this population, 30% was used to sample 4 out of 12 sub-counties in the county. Stratified Simple Random Sampling was applied to sample 30% of 385 schools from the 4 sub-counties giving 115 schools. Within the sampled schools, 30% of the class teachers participated in the study. There were 393 learners sampled out through a Fishers’ formula at 95% confidence level. Data was collected by use of questionnaires, interview schedules, document analysis and Focus Group Discussion. Pilot study was conducted to develop and test adequacy of research instruments. Construct validity of the instruments were tested. Reliability of the study was done through split-half and was set at 0.7 and above and the alpha level of 0.05 was applied. The reliability result was found to be 0.82. Qualitative data was analysed thematically while quantitative data was analysed descriptively and inferentially. The study established that teacher’s self-worth explained, transformational, instructional and democratic leadership approaches affect secondary school learners’ academic performance. From the findings, transformational and instructional leadership explained 93.7% and 92.1% variation respectively on school learners’ performance. A coefficient of 1.131 indicated that a unit change in transformational leadership leads to 1.131 unit of positive change in school learners’ performance. The study recommended that for academic achievement to be realized there should be unity and one language between a leader and his/her colleagues. The study also recommended that school principals should spearhead the mobilization of the resources. In conclusion, the study confirmed that teacher’s self-worth, transformational, instructional and democratic leadership approaches affect secondary school learner’s academic performance. The findings may help education policy makers to provide adequate resources for the success of learners who have been moulded by effective teachers