The Relationship Between Headmasters’ Leadership Behaviour and Teachers Commitment in Primary Schools in the District of Sarikei, Sarawak

Abstract

To identify whether there was in existence of relationship between leadership behaviour and teachers’ commitment in the school as well as toward the working groups in the school. What inspired this study was the fact that there were contradictory findings in past studies and also the study on the subject affecting primary school teachers in Sarawak was surprisingly rare. To determine a) different in standard of commitment between male teachers and female teachers, b) relationship between headmaster's instrumental leadership behaviour and teachers commitment toward school, c) relationship between headmaster's supportive leadership behaviour and teachers commitment toward school, d) relationship between headmaster's participative behaviour and teachers commitment toward school, e) relationship between headmaster's instrumental behaviour and teachers commitment toward group, f) relationship between headmaster's supportive behaviour and teachers commitment toward group, and g) relationship between headmaster's participative behaviour and teachers commitment toward group. There were 125 teachers from 12 various schools participated in this study. They represented two categories of services namely graduate teachers and non-graduate teachers. The questionnaires consisted of 28 items using 5 point scale to measure the response from the respondents for instrumental, supportive and participative leadership, the researcher used measurement developed by Harris and Ogbonna (2001) and whereas to measure teachers’ commitments, the commitment scale developed by Celep (2000) was used. There were 8 hypothesis constructed for this study. Independent sample t-test and Person correlation were used to test these hypotheses.The result of this study shows that a) there was no significant different between the commitment of male teachers and female teachers, b) instrumental leadership behaviour had positive relationship and significant to teachers’ commitment toward school, c) supportive leadership behaviour had positive relationship and significant with teachers commitment toward school, d) participative leadership behaviour had positive relationship and significant with teachers commitment toward school, e) instrumental leadership behaviour had positive relationship and significant with teachers commitment toward works, f) supportive leadership behaviour had positive relationship and significant with teachers commitment toward group works, g) participative leadership behaviour had positive relationship and significant with teachers commitment toward group works.