THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES OF SCHOOL PRINCIPLES AND TEACHERS’ JOB SATISFACTION IN GOVERNMENT PRIMARY SCHOOLSOF BATI WOREDA

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between principals’ leadership styles and teachers’ job satisfaction. In this study, descriptive survey and correlation method were employed by using simple random sampling method. The selected respondents in the research were 170 teachers from 8 primary schools. 168 of them were responded and returned.The response rate was 98.8%. The instruments were Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) used to measure leadership styles and the researcher prepared questionnaire to measure teachers’ job satisfaction. The findings of the study revealed that teachers observed their principals leadership style as transactional and as laissez-faire. Transformational leadership behavior was not utilized as expected. The finding shows that teachers had low level of satisfaction with supervision, payment and promotion, high level of satisfaction with work itself and with colleagues. The finding of the study also showed transactional and transformational leadership styles havepositive relationship with teachers’ job satisfactionand statistically significant. But transformational leadership style had more and significant positive relationship with teachers’ job satisfaction. The study also showed that laissez-faire leadership style had a very weak negative correlation with teachers’ job satisfaction and was not statistically significant.According to the data analysis, it can conclude that principals practiced more transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles than transformational leadership style. On the other hand, laissez-faire leadership style had insignificant relationship with teachers’ job satisfaction.Finally, recommendations were made in order to change the current leadership styles of principals and to enhance teachers’ job satisfaction of primary school in BatiWoreda. Sothe principals should give due attention for transformational leadership style to create trust and respect on teachers so as to bring effective teachers’ job satisfaction by promoting teachers moral.