School Heads’ Leadership and Teachers’ Performance: Groundwork for Instructional Effectiveness
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This study assessed the leadership styles of the school heads and teachers’ performance at Basak Elementary School for the School Year 2025–2026, utilizing a descriptive–correlational method and a modified questionnaire for data collection. The participants included two school heads with varying demographic and professional profiles—both female and married, aged between 41–60 years. One held a doctorate and had over 21 years of experience with international training exposure, while the other had completed doctoral units, served 11–20 years, and had attended national-level seminars. The teachers, all female, married, and aged 41–50, were full-fledged master’s degree holders with 11–20 years of teaching experience. They had attended division-level training and were rated as outstanding in their performance. Among the leadership styles assessed, the commanding style was the most consistently practiced at the highest level, followed by coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and visionary styles, all of which were also frequently employed. This suggests that school heads demonstrated leadership flexibility and adaptability. Teacher performance was notably strong across key areas, particularly in coherent instruction, student assessment, and professionalism, where teachers exceeded expectations. Their performance in content knowledge, pedagogy, and understanding learner diversity was also commendable. Overall, teacher performance was rated as “exceeding expectations.” A weak but statistically significant positive correlation (r = 0.395, p = 0.000) was found between school heads’ leadership styles and teacher performance, indicating that improvements in leadership style are associated with slight increases in teacher performance. However, several issues emerged related to school leadership: lack of disciplinary support, micromanagement, toxic leadership, unclear performance evaluations, limited professional development support, administrative overload, exclusion from decision-making, ineffective communication, lack of feedback, and absence of a clear instructional vision. These concerns were linked to teacher stress, burnout, low morale, disengagement, and reduced collaboration. Despite the overall positive performance results, these issues suggest areas for leadership improvement to better support teacher growth and instructional quality. The findings emphasize the importance of effective, supportive, and inclusive leadership in promoting a high-performing and collaborative educational environment. The researcher hereby recommended that the leadership-driven teaching performance plan be conducted.
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