| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study is to establish the extent to which headteacher leadership
styles impact the motivation levels of primary teachers in Aberdeenshire. This study
will determine the key leadership styles adopted by headteachers and explore
employee perceptions of headteacher leadership styles. It will also evaluate whether
headteacher leadership styles have an effect on the motivation levels of primary
school teachers in Aberdeenshire.
A considerable amount of literature has been published on the different leadership
styles that exist (Lewin et al. 1939; Charry 2012 cited in Amanchukwu et al. 2015,
p.7; Monga 2015). However, it is evident that a small number of leadership styles,
namely autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire, are more commonly used, due to
their suitability, in an educational context (Adeyemi 2006, cited in Adeyemi and Adu
2013 p. 70; Machumu and Kaitila 2014; Ndaipa 2016). The Department for Education
(2017) identified that leadership styles can have compounding impacts on employee
morale and performance levels. As such, it is apparent that if teachers are
demotivated, as a consequence of the headteacher’s leadership style, the quality of
education they provide could suffer as a result.
A quantitative methodology was adopted for this study, to build on the work of
Adeyemi and Adu (2013), Machumu and Kaitila (2014), and Boampong et al. (2016),
by focusing on a specific Scottish local authority. For this study, online questionnaires
were distributed to primary school teachers in Aberdeenshire through the use of
snowball sampling. A response rate of 55 respondents was achieved, consisting of 1
male and 54 female primary school teachers.
The key findings of this study revealed that a democratic leadership style is deemed
the most appropriate and, equally, most effective for an educational context in terms
of gaining teachers’ contribution to decision making. Furthermore, a democratic
leadership style was also found to increase the levels of motivation and job
satisfaction of primary school teachers in Aberdeenshire, supporting the findings of
Boampong et al. (2016) and Aunga and Masare (2017). | en |
