The influence of principal's administrative strategies on teachers' commitment in some secondary schools in Yaounde II municipality

Abstract

The duty of a secondary school principal requires-Strategies to manage all the resources at their disposal in order to achieve educational goals in the school setting. This can only be possible through the proper management of the teaching staff by improving their commitment to the goals of the institution. The main objective of this study was to investigate principal’s administrative strategies and to examine how these strategies influence teachers’ commitment in some secondary schools in Yaounde II municipality. The research problem was identified from the fact that some government secondary school teachers in Yaounde have abandoned their duty post, which is an indication of lack of commitment. While some private secondary schools mainly recruit administrators and teachers who have no formal training in the field. In order to investigate principal’s administrative strategies and examine how these strategies influence teachers’ commitment, principal’s administrative strategies were presented as the independent variable with three concepts, which are: planning strategy, supervision strategy and evaluation strategy. While teachers’ commitment was considered as the independent variable as well. Three theories were put forth, which are: the contingency theory, X and Y theory of McGregor and the expectancy theory of motivation. The methodology used was the mixed approach, that is, quantitative and qualitative. The accessible population was 4 secondary schools in Yaounde II municipality. The sample size was 275 teachers with four principals, a questionnaire was used to collect data from teachers and interview guide helped to record data from principals in the field. The data were analyzed using the convergent parallel design with the linear regressive presentation. The hypothesis confirmed that Principals’ Planning Strategy has significant Influence on Teachers’ Commitment in selected schools Yaounde II municipality. We therefore recommended that more seminars and conferences be organized with the first focus on equipping school administration and teachers with administrative competences. Professional development programmes in this direction will go a long way to enhance on teaching effectiveness and teachers’ commitment. Equally, institutional and administrative planning should be integrated at all levels of the school. The integration of planning strategies will enable operational stakeholders to achieve institutional and national strategic objectives leading to sustainability in educational practices. Recommended text and reference books should be examined to ensure that they are clear to the teaching staff, content and context specific, and equally void ambiguity. This will go a long way to communicate effectively to teachers the various plans and programmes.