ABSTRACT
The study investigated principals’ leadership style and conflict management strategies in Edo state Public Secondary School. To guide the study, two research questions were raised, four were hypothesized and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study was a descriptive research design adopting the correlational research design. The population of the study was all the 136 principals in the Public Senior Secondary Schools in Edo South Senatorial District. The sample size of the study is 68 principals constituting 50% of the population. The Principals’ Leadership Styles Questionnaire (PLSQ) and Conflict Management Strategies Questionnaire (CMSQ) were used to collected data. The questionnaire was divided into section A and B, and was validated by the researchers’ supervisors and one other expert in Educational management, faculty of Education, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria. The reliability of the instrument was determined with crombatch alpha statistics technique which yielded 0.792.
The data were analysed with the descriptive research design and was used for research question 1 & 2, the Pearson Product Moment Coefficient Statistics was used to analyse hypotheses 3 & 4 while 5 & 6 were analysed with the Fisher Z-test analysis.
The findings revealed that the predominant principals’ leadership style is the charismatic leadership style, while the predominant conflict management strategy is the accommodating conflict management strategy. There was a significant relationship between principals’ leadership styles and conflict management strategies. However, principals leadership style and conflict management strategies based on gender qualification and experience had no significant relationship. Based on the findings, it was concluded that there was a predominant leadership and conflict management style used by principals in Edo State Public Secondary School. It was therefore recommended that ministry of Education should be able to expose principals to different styles of leadership and conflict management strategies in schools.
