Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship among principals’ leadership practice, school culture and organizational health of secondary schools of Addis Ababa city Administration. Convergent parallel mixed research design was used. A total of 450 teachers were randomly selected from 13 secondary schools. Data for the quantitative part was collected using three sets of questionnaire: Leadership practice inventory observer developed by Kouzes and Posner, School culture elements questionnaire developed by Cavanagh and Dellar and Organizational Health inventory for secondary schools developed by Hoy, Tarter and Kottkamp. Interview with 4 principals, 16 teachers (who did not participate in filling questionnaire) and document analysis were used for the qualitative data collection. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with structural equation modeling for the quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative data. The study revealed that school principals were practicing leadership at a moderate level; school culture and organizational health of the schools were also found to be moderate that shows schools were not exhibiting strong leadership and school culture. The three variables were found to be significantly related to each other. Accordingly leadership practice of principals was found to predict both culture and organizational health of the secondary schools. School culture was found to mediate the relationship between principal leadership and organizational health of schools. Positive relationship among most of the subscales of the three variables was found ranging from weak to moderate correlation. Qualitative findings showed low level of school based professional development, low level of student motivation to learn and average expectation of teachers from students as challenges of the secondary schools. It can be concluded that the absence of strong leadership and school culture led to lower organizational health in the secondary schools of Addis Ababa city Administration. The more principals practice effective leadership there will be a determining effect on the level of organizational health of the schools. It was recommended that principals would focus on leadership, professional development programs for principals that are focused on leadership need to be introduced, positive school culture may be built, student motivation to learn would be improved and school leadership guidelines would be reexamined and improved
