An Analysis of Leadership Styles and Practices among Secondary School Principals in Belize

Abstract

Belize is a young and vibrant nation as such the population is rapidly expanding so more and more schools are opening each year. Thus, there are recently greater demands for principals in the school system. As a consequence, the Ministry of Education and the School Boards need to equip the schools with leaders who are effective, efficient, responsible, and trustworthy. Hence, this study examined the preferential leadership practice and influential factors that have contributed to the leadership style among secondary school principals in Belize based on transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire theories. Data were collected using mixed research methods. The Quantitative instrument for data gathering of leadership style preferences was the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ FORM 5X) developed and tested by Brass and Aviolo (1996) which were tested against the demographic data employed in the study. The Qualitative data were gathered using semi-structured interview, observation and documentation. The population size was 47 secondary school principals in Belize; the response rate for the quantitative analysis was 70.2% of the targeted population. For the in-depth study, eight principals were purposefully selected by experts, based on outstanding Caribbean Examination Center (CXC) performance, for further analysis of the practices and influential factors associated with the leadership style of the principals employed during the 2006 school year, in the secondary school system. The findings showed that transformational leadership style was the preferred leadership style practiced among secondary school principals. The demographic data tested in the study including gender were not statistically significant to transformational leadership style, which was the dominantly practiced leadership style. In the in-depth study the factors that had the highest rating were family background and formal education system, whilst self discipline, experience and mentorship were secondary factors identified amongst the principals. It is important to note that the findings were limited to the secondary school systems in Belize and cannot be generalized to other leaders in education. However, the information can be used as a meaningful basis for reference and guidance. The study offers recommendations to policy makers and professionals in the field of education, so that they can use the data as a benchmark to cultivate strong leaders and develop programs to continue to empower leaders within the school systems. Finally, the study makes suggestions for future research in the area of leadership in Belize’s educational context.