Relationship between principals’ transactional leadership style and students’ conformity to rules in public secondary schools in Nakuru County, Kenya.

Abstract

This study sought to determine the relationship between principals’ transactional leadership style and students' conformity to rules in Public Secondary Schools in Nakuru County, Kenya. The study was underpinned on the Social Control Theory by Hirschi (1969). The study adopted a correlational research design. The target population of this study was 338 principals, 338 deputy principals, 3426 teachers and 116,374 students in 338 public secondary schools in Nakuru County. Stratified random sampling was used to select 100 schools. Purposive sampling was used to select 100 principals while Proportionate, and simple random sampling was used to select 346 teachers and 383 students. Ten per cent of the deputy principals were selected. Questionnaires were used to collect data from principals, teachers and students, while interviews were used to collect data from Deputy Principals. Test-retest reliability had a coefficient of 0.70, indicating that the instruments were reliable. The finding revealed a statistically significant positive relationship between transactional leadership style and students’ conformity to school rules r (=0.410; p=0.000). It was concluded that principals' transactional leadership style significantly relates to students' conformity to school rules. Provision of rewards and recognition constantly to students who conform to school rules and reprimand to those students who do not conform to school rules by the principal is necessary. The study recommends that the principal should be willing to use suspension and even repeated suspension where necessary as a tool for dealing with students demonstrating chronic behaviour problems that disrupt the school climate.