Leadership Styles and Change Dynamics in Public Schools of Pakistan

Abstract

Leadership plays a vital role in managing organizations and one of the key issues is managing change. Pakistani public schools are educational organizations which have been subject to top-down change in recent years. The chief actor of change, the public school teacher is assumed to be ignorant of the dynamics of change. This quantitative research was conducted to know the awareness of public school teachers about the dynamics of change and their understanding of school principal’s role in change. For this purpose a survey was conducted with the teachers of public secondary schools of Punjab in three districts. Multistage sampling technique was used to draw the sample of 135 (male 69 and female 66) teachers. Data was collected through a personally constructed questionnaire to suit the purpose. The Cronbach Alpha (Coefficient of Reliability) of the questionnaire was 0.947. Research findings reveal that public school teachers are fully aware of the importance of change. In fact they are ready to assume the responsibility for second order change. However, the system is not ready to initiate bottom-up change; the leadership role is critical and leadership training is the need of the hour that will gear the system in the desired direction.

Keywords

• educational leadership
• leadership styles
• change
• systems approach
• pakistani public schools