Abstract

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The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the leadership orientation of principals and school culture as perceived by teachers. The design of the study was QUAN-qual of explanatory type where the quantitative type informed the qualitative phase of the study. A total of 55 teachers, from 3 complete primary (1-8) schools located in Ambo city administration in the zone of West Showa, Oromia regional state, Ethiopia, were randomly selected to involve in this study. The data for the study were collected using the School Culture Survey, which assessed six dimensions of school culture: collaborative leadership, teacher collaboration, and unity of purpose, professional development, collegial support, and learning partnership; and Leadership Orientation Questionnaire (LOQ) that categorized the leadership frames of principals into structural, human resource, political and symbolic frames. Frequencies, mean values, standard deviations, and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were used to present and analyze the results of the study. The findings indicate that structural and political frames of leadership were the dominant frames of the principals of the schools. Unity of purpose, professional development and collegial support were the prevailing cultures in the schools whereas the remaining: teacher collaboration, collaborative leadership, and learning partnership were the less popular school cultures as perceived by teachers. Besides, there were a positive, strong to moderate relationship between human resource frame, symbolic frame and structural frame of leadership and all the dimensions of school cultures except collegial support. It was concluded that the school principals had a narrow view of school leadership orientation and most of the school culture domains were not to the expected level in the school system. Therefore, it is suggested that building strong personal relationships with teachers and playing symbolic role of leadership contribute significantly to developing and maintaining collaborative school culture.