Instructional Leadership of Principals in Developing Classroom Learning and Teaching Process

Abstract

The study is based on Instructional Leadership of school principals of Puttalam educational zone. The principal occupies an important position in the school instructions. The idea that principals should serve as instructional leaders in school learning and teaching process —not just as generic managers. Therefore, Principals are needed to fulfil this role as Instructional Leadership. So, To provide proposals to improve instructional leadership of Principals is needed to evaluate the perceptions of principals, teachers and academic staff, find out the best practices of instructional leadership roles of principals and assess the role of Instructional Leadership on the Students’ achievements. To achieve the main purpose, the researcher aimed the following objectives: to evaluate the perceptions of principals’ Instructional Leadership, to find out the perceptions of Instructional Leadership of teachers and academic officers, to introduce the best practices of instructional leadership roles of principals in the Puttalam district schools. 4. To assess the role of instructional Leadership on the Students’ achievements and to provide proposals to improve instructional leadership of Principals. A mixed research method carried out with stratified probability sampling. 33 principals, 20 teachers and 10 academic officers were selected as sample in Tamil medium schools in Puttalam educational zone. Principal Instructional Manual Rating Scale (PIMRS) questionnaire is used for data collection from principals and self developed an interview schedule is used to collect data from teachers and academic officers. One way ANOVA and post hoc methods are used for analyse the quantitative data with the SPSS Ver. 18 software. The results revealed that the principal of Puttalam district has positive perception on Instructional Leadership. Specially principals from 1C and Type 2 School are highly expressed Instructional Leadership behaviour and significantly related indirectly on students’ achievement. However class supervision and monitoring the students’ progress are showed as below average. These findings are suggested that the quality of instructional leadership should be increased, and class supervision, monitoring students’ progress and learning climate should be developed for the best instructional practices.