The Practice and Challenges of Situational Leadership: The Case of Some Selected Private Secondary Schools of Nifas Silk Lafto Sub-City
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2025-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study was conducted in private secondary schools in Addis Ababa with the title ‘The practice and challenges of situational leadership; the case of some selected schools in private secondary schools in Nifas Silk Lafto sub-city.’ The study was conducted based on Hersey and Blanchard life cycle of situational leadership, which is known to be flexible and adapted to situations. There was limited research on the topic which is believed to be very effective if implemented properly. This research aimed to identify the practicability of situational leadership within the selected private schools and identify the challenges the schools face in implementing the situational leadership style. The study was conducted in 8 private high schools selected randomly from the population of 25 schools. From those eight schools, 12 teachers were selected from each schools with simple random sampling with 96 total population of teachers. 19 school leaders were selected which comprises all the school principals, all the deputy principals and three compound supervisors. The research used descriptive survey design. The data were collected through questionnaire to teachers and interview to the school leaders. The data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and percentile. Based on the analysis of the questionnaire data and cross checking them with the interview, it was found that almost all private secondary schools are not implementing the high level situational leadership practices, that is, the schools are implementing the two low level of situational leadership namely, telling style with 78.28% agreement and coaching style with 57.7% agreement.. The schools are not applying participatory with 69.4% agreement and delegating types with 74.75% agreement of situational leaderships. The major challenges in implementing situational leadership in private secondary school were found to be lack of trainings for school leaders, resistance to changes, resource limitations, rigid cultural norms, teachers’ turnover and administrative overload. As a result the following recommendations were forwarded. School owners and school leaders should let the necessary training on implementation of situational leadership, fostering culture of decision making by involving staffs in some strategic decision making, allocating the necessary budget to fulfill resources, developing system to retain teachers, reducing school leaders’ overload and empowering competent staffs.
Keywords: Situational leadership, private secondary schools, leadership challenges, Ethiopia, educational management.
Description
Keywords
Situational leadership, private secondary schools, leadership challenges, Ethiopia, educational management.