Holger, Emeritus (Professor)Chinapah, Vinayagum (Professor)Shega, Temesgen2019-04-022023-11-052019-04-022023-11-052017-02http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/17405School leadership is not merely getting hold of the status, but it is having dependable theoretical and practical attributes the status demands. In order to fulfill the demands of leadership, it is normal to challenge followers in scholarly ways and to be challenged by followers for the good of the organization. This is one possible way of differentiating a leader from a manager. Thus, the study was targeted to explore how the actual school principals’ actions enhanced/discouraged the commitment of teachers to organizational learning in the selected schools. The study was initiated because of two basic reasons. The primary reason was that lack of research evidence’ of how leadership actions and competencies inspire teachers for organizational learning. Second, although leadership actions are decisive for schools’ success, the school principals’ roles as a leader were not recognized by the society. In a similar way, management functions are more credited than leadership roles by the actors themselves in Ethiopia. Qualitative case study was used as a research design and semi- structured interview, observation, and document analysis were the data gathering tools. The findings show that the school principals and teachers have similar perception of the importance of organizational learning. Although they have similar insights about the concept and importance of organizational learning; its implementation was not the same in the studied government and private secondary schools. The major finding of the study reveals that the government school principal was perceived by teachers as ineffective in leading OL. They felt that CPD as one of the strategies for organizational learning is top-down by its design and it does not match to the realities in the school. The school principal used transactional leadership approach to achieve the school’s goals and applied his legitimate power in leading the teachers for work place learning. The teachers complained that their ideas were not given attention and not valued. Senior teachers considered themselves as master minds of the school because of their long years teaching experience and they discouraged novice teachers when they come up with new ideas. Sense of "we" and "they" was deep-rooted between the school management and teachers. A culture of working together was not well developed; teachers blame the school administration and the school administration accuses the teachers. On the contrary, leadership actions in the private school were transformative. The school principal had shown adequate potential to motivate and persuade the teachers to learn new things and he had been willing to listen to teachers' voices, to read teachers' interests and needs. He served as a role- model by making himself life-long leader-learner in his retirement ages, valued collective endeavors and an individual’s contributions. The teachers were also open to accept new ideas, professional comments and they visited each other’s classrooms and tried together new pedagogical arts. At the institution level new ideas were welcomed regardless of power and position. The teachers solved the school problems together, valued collective endeavors and an individual’s contributions, visited each other’s’ classrooms and tried together new pedagogical practices. Key words: leadership, transformational leadership, organizational learning, and learning cultureenleadershiptransformational leadershiporganizational learningand learning cultureThesis