Inspiring a Shared Vision: Getting All the Teachers in the Bandwagon

Effective organizations have often been associated with the kind of leadership practice exercised in such organizations. When schools are not performing well, the blame is usually put on the principal who is the leader of the school. This study explored the relationship between secondary school Principals’ transformational leadership practice of inspiring a shared vision and students’ academic performance in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). The study was carried out in Nairobi County, Kenya. Stratified sampling process was used to ensure that both public and private schools in Nairobi were captured in the study. Leadership behaviour was measured using the Leadership Practices Inventory-(“Self” and “others”). Correlational research design was employed in data analysis. Pearson correlations were used to establish if there was a relationship between transformational leadership characteristics and academic performance. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test if a relationship existed between selected demographic characteristics and the interaction of leadership characteristics of principals’ and students’ academic performance. To test relationships between principals’ ratings and teachers’ ratings, ratings of male principals and female principals, t-test was used. Results indicated a positive correlation of “Inspiring a shared vision”. It was recommended that secondary school principals should exhibit transformational leadership of inspiring a shared vision in order to succeed in today’s changing world of educational leadership. Keywords: Transformational leadership, inspiring a shared vision, secondary school principals, teachers, academic performance