Principals´Personnel Characteristic Skills: a Predictor of Teachers´ Classroom Management in Ekiti State Secondary Schools

This study examined principals’ personnel characteristic skills and teachers’ classroom management in Ekiti State secondary schools. The research design was the descriptive survey. The population of the study was made up 187 principals and 7,323 teachers in all the 187 public secondary schools in Ekiti State. The sample was made up of 756 respondents which comprised 36 principals and 720 teachers using multistage sampling procedure. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the 36 school principals and 720 teachers across the three senatorial districts of the State. Two instruments used in this study were self-designed questionnaire. They were: Personnel Characteristic Skills Questionnaires (PCSQ) and Teachers’ Classroom Management Questionnaire (TCMQ). Data for the study were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The two research questions raised were analysed using percentage scores while the hypothesis was tested using multiple regression analysis at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed that 58.9%, 38.3% and 2.8% of secondary school teachers of Ekti State secondary schools demonstrated high, moderate and low level classroom management skills respectively. The result further showed that supervision skill (91%), communication skill (89%), inter-personal relationship skill (88%), decision making skill (84%), and training and development skill (79%) were the personnel characteristic skills adopted by the principals. The study equally showed that the R square value was 0.859 which indicated that 85.9% of variance in the teachers’ classroom management can be accounted for by principals’ personnel characteristic skills. Furthermore, the result indicated that supervision skill (β= 0.519, p<0.05), training and development skill (β= 0.345, p<0.05), inter-personal relationship skill (β= 0.315, p<0.05), communication skill (β= 0.277, p<0.05) and decision making skill (β= 0.228, p<0.05) were significant predictors of teachers’ classroom management in Ekiti State secondary schools. The study therefore concluded that those principals’ personnel characteristic skills (supervisory, training and development, inter-personal relationship, communication, and decision making) positively influenced teachers’ classroom management in Ekiti State secondary schools.