Instructional Leadership

Instructional leadership is the main concern for all institutions and organizations in various countries all around the world. It became internationally a primary factor in the academic policy agendas. The extent to which both the educators and students view the school as a desirable place for teaching and learning depends on the behavior of the principals who provided formal leadership. Ibukun (2008) suggested that secondary schools have been derailed in providing the quality education expected of them to achieve higher academic achievement for students.

Furthermore, Ibukun (2008) noted that there are lots of problems that seem to bedevil the educational system, making it ineffective through assessing low students’ academic achievement; therefore, schools must be provided with good leadership styles and types to meet the eagerness and desire of the people by attaining higher students’ academic achievement (cited in, Yahya, 2015).

The success of any organization depends essentially on leadership style due to its effect on employees’ performance. Regarding the constant change in the social, technological, and economical environment, leadership became a major attribute of management today than before.

Clark &Clark (1992) identified four fundamental factors in leadership. The first factor is that different people require varied styles of leadership, for instance a new hired employee is more supervised than an experienced one. Similarly, for an individual who lacks motivation needs a different approach than a person with a higher degree of motivation. In other words, a leader must have information about his employees. The second factor is that a leader must honestly identify his subordinates, the information they possess and get informed about the work they can do.

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The third one is that a leader must lead via two-way communication and much of it is nonverbal. And finally, a leader must be aware of making his decisions or any reaction toward his employees because what he does in one situation will not necessarily work in another. So he must carefully decide the best way of action and the leadership style required for each situation. Leadership influences the function of management, while, managers’ main role is to bring together the resources, develop strategies, organize and control activities to accomplish agreed objectives. Reed (2005) stated that leadership increases the effectiveness and proficiency of management and sustainable performances. And Maicibi (2005) observed that proper leadership styles lead to effective performance in learning institutions (cited in Aunga and Masare, 2017).

A Study done by Faize (2010) in Punjab, Pakistan revealed that leadership styles influence the academic achievement especially the democratic style which is the most effective leadership style and an important resource input that plays its positive role in achieving academic achievement. In addition, Al-Taneiji and Ibrahim (2012) found in their study in Dubai that transformational leadership style was often utilized, and there is a positive relation between principal leadership style and his effectiveness.

In Lebanon, studies done by Chami and Mikhael (2016) showed that the quality of private education is better than that of public education since the passing and repetition rates compared to public schools are less. As for the overall repetition rate, it reached 21.5% in private schools in the academic year 2015-2016 of which 52.3% is the percentage of students enrolled in the public sector and the 47.7% percentage remaining includes repetition rates of students registered in private schools for-profit, free and UNRWA. The school principals play vital role in the performance of teachers and students. Hence the major factors that determine the way a school performs is the style of leadership a school principal uses. In Lebanese public schools we find most of the teachers are holders of Lebanese Baccalaureate Part II. And the most important thing is that these teachers are supervised by principals who didn’t study school management and administration. And it has been observed that the reason behind the poor performance of schools is due to the poor principals’ leadership. And usually when the results of the Lebanese secondary official exams are released during the month of July, principals whose schools did well are appraised while whose schools didn’t do well were blamed and criticized for their leadership styles used. Most studies in Lebanon were done to examine the effect of principals’ leadership styles on teachers’ performance, or on teachers’ job satisfaction, but no studies were done to determine the influence of principals’ leadership styles on students’ academic achievement in secondary schools. Hence, this study aims at determining the influence of principals’ leadership styles on students’ achievement in Lebanese official secondary exams in purpose of filling the gap.