INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP AND MENTORING STRATEGIES ADOPTED BY PRINCIPALS FOR QUALITY TEACHING AND LEARNING IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ENUGU STATE

Abstract

This study compared public and private secondary school principals’ instructional leadership and mentoring strategies for quality teaching and learning in public and private secondary schools in Enugu State Nigeria. Two specific purposes and two research questions guided the study. Two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised all the 25,579 teachers (8,362 public and 17,217 private) secondary schools in Enugu State. Multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted for the study. A researcher-developed instrument titled “Principals’ Instructional Leadership and Mentoring Strategies for Quality Teaching and Learning Questionnaire (PILMSQTLQ) was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts. Two experts from the Department of Educational Management and Policy and one expert from the Department of Educational Foundation (Measurement and Evaluation) all in the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University. The internal consistency co-efficient for the two clusters of the PILMSQTLQ were 0.86 and 0.80 obtained using Cronbach’s Alpha method. Data were analyzed using mean and t-test. The findings of the study revealed among others that public secondary school principals adopt instructional leadership and mentoring strategies for quality teaching and learning more than their private school counterparts in Enugu State. Based on the findings, the study recommended among others that private secondary school principals in Enugu State should be encouraged to improve in their adoption of instructional leadership strategies for quality teaching and learning. This would help inculcate in teachers the needed skills, capacities and competences that will help them achieve instructional effectiveness.