Principals’ Administrative Strategies and Instructional Supervisory Techniques as Correlates of Teachers’ Productivity in Public Secondary Schools in South East Nigeria

Abstract

This study explored the relationship between principals’ motivational strategies and instructional supervisory techniques and teachers’ productivity in public secondary schools in South East Nigeria. The study adopted a Correlation research design. A sample of 391 teachers from a population of 16,388 teachers in the 1140 public secondary schools in 21 Education zones in South-East Nigeria was used for the study, which was determined through the Taro Yamane Mathematical model. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used in selecting the various sample strata which constitute the region of south-East while simple random sampling technique was used in selecting the respondents from the different education zones across the various states.  Three sets of questionnaires titled Principals’ Motivational strategies (PMSQ) Principals’ Instructional Supervisory Technique Questionnaire (PISTQ) and Teachers’ Productivity Questionnaire (TPQ) structured by the researchers were used for data collection. Three experts from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, validated the instruments for data collection. The reliability of the instruments was determined using the test-retest method for stability, while the internal consistency of the instrument was established using the Cronbach alpha method. In addition, the split-half method was used to establish the internal consistency of the instruments.  The collected data from the respondents were statistically analysed using Pearson’s r and R² (coefficient of determination) for the research questions, while Linear regression analysis was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that there exists a low but positive relationship between principals’ leadership style motivational strategy with a strong positive relationship between principals’ action research instructional supervisory technique and teachers’ productivity.  It was recommended that School administrators should focus on implementing effective leadership development programmes and also engage in professional development programmes that emphasise data-driven decision-making, continuous improvement, and collaboration through the use of action research as a key supervision strategy.