School Principals’ Management Styles and its Influence on Primary Schools Teachers Motivation in Kurunegala District of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Primary School administration in Sri Lanka is bedeviled with a plethora of quandaries most of which emanate from shortages in management styles of leaders of these institutes. There have been times when edifiers had to stage open protests to register their displeasure about School Principals‟ management styles which they often described as lack of administrative and management Skills. This situation has often led to low morale among edifiers and consequently this study fixates on ascertaining the effects of School Principals‟ management styles on teachers‟ motivation in Primary Schools in Sri Lanka. The study additionally endeavors to visually examine and expound how School Principals‟ informal relationship with edifiers accommodates as a motivation for edifiers to work to achieve institutional goals.The descriptive design was espoused for this study. The population comprised 10 Primary School Principals and 633 edifiers in the Kurunegala District. The sample for this study comprised 100 teachers who were randomly culled from the public Primary Schools in the Kurunegala District.The study, among other things, revealed that most edifiers optically discern their Principals as bosses and not as friends. Again, it was exposed that though edifiers were involved in decision making, the genuine setting of aims for a school were left in the hands of the Principal. It was ergo recommended for School Principals to adopt the Management by Walking About and Management by Objective so as to get more proximate to their edifiers in the running of schools. Predicated on the research it is recommended that Principals of schools be given in-Service training to improve them on how to coalesce the utilization of the two management styles to incentivize their edifiers to perform and Principals of the miscellaneous schools should be able to delegate some of their obligations to other assistant Principals. Withal Efforts should be made to perpetually involve the edifiers in the decision making process in the school to boost their motivation to perform.