A Qualitative Study on the Relationship between School Leadership Styles and the Governing Systems of School Principals in Peninsular Malaysia

The significance of effective leadership and management for the successful operation of schools and colleges has been increasingly acknowledged in the 21st century. The trend towards self-management in the United Kingdom and in many other parts of the world has led to an enhanced appreciation of the importance of managerial competence for educational leaders. Today, leadership is seen as central and essential to delivering the changes, improvement and performance that community increasingly expects of all organizations including schools. The changing manner of school management has undoubtedly created reforms in the field of education with change expressed in the evolution from exterior supervision of school work to the empowerment of school’s staff, principal’s and teacher’s roles. This study was initiated to look into the leadership style among school principals in governing school systems in Peninsular Malaysia. Secondary data consisting of various leadership styles used in administering teachers, transformational and transactional leadership and the correlation between leadership styles and organizational variables, relationship between value systems and school principal’s principles were performed. Numerous researches have highlighted the fact that leadership behavior is a predictor of its efficacy and leads to the examination of leadership evolution. In this study, leaders with a high moral value system tend to lean towards a transformational leadership style in governing school systems in Peninsular Malaysia and acknowledges a positive correlation between leadership styles and value systems in school administration.