Transformational Leadership: Teachers' Idealized Influence on Students' Academic Performance in County Secondary Schools in Kirinyaga, Kenya

Abstract

Leadership plays an essential role in any education development and quality of students' academic performance. In many parts of the world, including the developed and developing countries, there is the recognition that schools require influential leaders and managers if they are to provide the best possible education for their students. This study explores the relationship between transformational leadership and academic performance of secondary school students in Kirinyaga County. Education plays a vital role in bringing enlightened transformation in society. Therefore, understanding how the administration can improve students' performance in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations in Kirinyaga County, is central to this study. The study examined teachers' idealized management practices as an essential indicator for a transformative leader on students' academic performance in KCSE. The study adopted an explanatory sequential mixed method research. This approach involved collecting quantitative data first, analyzing it and then developing qualitative interviews to follow the initial findings. The qualitative design focused on phenomenology, to understand how teachers' experienced idealized influence and how it affected their student's academic performance. In the quantitative phase, surveys were used to determine teachers' idealized Management practices (IMP) on Students Academic Performance (SAP). A random sampling of 48 teachers and 359 students were selected to participate in the survey from the total population of 484 teachers and 9,904 students. The researcher interviewed teachers to qualify their transformational leader knowledge on transformational leadership and experience in relation to their students' performance. Besides was a documentary analysis to obtain more information on students' academic performance. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics, analysis frequencies, means, standard deviations and percentages were calculated and presented in tables. Results revealed that IMP has a significant favorable influence on KCSE academic performance of 0.208 at alpha value 0.05 level of significance (2-tailed). Future research may focus on the impact of teachers and transformational leadership on school culture, among other areas of interest, to inform educational officers and other professionals working to support young people through effective transformational leadership around idealized management practices.