Instructional Leadership Role in Enhancing Students’ Academic Achievement: Challenges and Opportunities in Selected West Shewa Zone Public Secondary Schools, Ethiopia
Keywords:
School, instruction, leadership, academic achievementAbstract
Instructional leader’s involvement in enhancing students’ academic achievement plays a paramount role in fostering students’ learning. The purpose of this article was to assess the instructional leadership role in enhancing students’ academic achievement: challenges and opportunities in selected west Shewa Zone public secondary schools. To this end, mixed research methods and an explanatory sequential mixed research design were used. For the quantitative part, an closed-ended questionnaire was prepared and administered to 140 secondary school teachers and analyzed by using statistical tools such as mean, standard deviation, and independent t-test with the help of SPSS version 20. For the qualitative part, interviews were used to collect the necessary data from 32 participants. The result showed that instructional leaders failed to: develop and communicate shared visions and missions for their own staff, coordinate curriculum related issues, work on teachers’ professional development, and create a conducive learning environment so as to enhance students’ academic achievement. The study therefore recommends that secondary school instructional leaders at all levels should work in developing and communicating shared visions and missions for their staff, coordinate curriculum-related issues, work on teachers professional development, and create a conducive learning environment so as to enhance students’ academic achievement.
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