Leadership Styles of Principals in Private Higher Secondary Schools in Nepal

This article focuses on principals' leadership style in private schools in Nepal regarding their job experience, age factors, level of education, and gender issues. It is based on the three dimensions of the leadership of Principals. They are democratic, autocratic, and laissez-faire, and they were examined with the rating style questionnaires as perceived by principals themselves and their teachers. The population sample of this study covered ۷۸ principals and ۱۶۳ teachers of different private higher secondary schools. The data for the qualitative study were collected, and Stata programming was applied as a statistical tool. The findings of this research indicated that most respondents, including principals themselves with different demographic characters, gave a high score for the democratic leadership styles of the principals. Basically, no variation was noted between the leadership style of male and female principals. But, respondents of academically highly qualified female teachers and more experienced teachers gave high scores for autocratic and laissez-faire leadership style in relation to few management functions like decision making, goal setting, and communication only. Conclusively, the democratic leadership style of principals was highly desirable, but autocratic leadership style and laissez-faire leadership styles were deemed desirable.

Keywords:

Leadership Style , Democratic leadership , Autocratic leadership , Laissez-faire leadership