Cross-sectional survey reveals age and gender influence perceived headteacher leadership styles among high school teachers, highlighting the importance of adaptive school administration.
Key Points
To examine how high school teachers' demographic characteristics—specifically age, gender, and educational qualification—relate to their perceptions of headteachers' leadership styles.
Conducted a quantitative cross-sectional survey employing a census approach across two public senior high schools in the Atwima Mponua District, Ghana (N = 168).
Administered a validated questionnaire assessing transformational, democratic, authoritative, laissez-faire, and situational leadership styles (Cronbach's α = 0.761–0.852).
Evaluated differences across demographic categories using descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and independent-samples t-tests.
Age was significantly associated with perceptions across all five leadership styles (F(6, 161) = 2.91–4.52, p ≤ 0.006, η² = 0.098–0.144), with differences concentrated between younger teachers (26–35 years) and older teachers (≥41 years).
Gender had a significant association with perceived democratic leadership (d = 0.33) and transformational leadership (d = 0.57), but showed no significant link to authoritative, laissez-faire, or situational leadership.
Educational qualification demonstrated no statistically significant association with teachers' perceptions of any leadership style (p > 0.05).