The Relationship between Decision Making Style of Principals of Senior Secondary Schools and their Teaching Experiences

1. INTRODUCTION

The efficient administration of schools is of utmost importance in the emerging challenges facing secondary education. Skilled students provide a strong platform for national development, social change, and globalization. The function of the principal in the planning of school is very significant in such developments. She/he is the pioneer guardian of students, official, executive, scholastic organizer, and initiator of all the scholarly plans. The Principal, along with being a group leader, is aware of how to include teachers and staff for the all-round development of the school, how to organize the situations and how to initiate various tasks that bring the best results. The principal is a distinguished leader to encourage the efforts of the group and serves as the backbone of any school. Principals ought to have the capacity not exclusively to distinguish the nearby needs inside the school yet in addition need to manage the issues corresponding to different offices and social networks. Monitoring the educational, cultural progress of students through teachers, training, and mentoring teachers, staff, and supervising the relationship of the school with the parents of the students and community, etc., are the main tasks of the principal. In the execution of these tasks, principals have to face many problems. They adopt the decision-making style to diagnose these problems. At the point when we concern about the school executives, the decision-making style for any principal is very essential. Decision making is an art of selection of a course of action among a set of alternatives in different situations and problems. A person does not become a leader only on the basis of virtues. Its decision-making style gives him the path to becoming a leader. George R. Terry has defined it as ―Decision making is the select ion based on some criteria from two or more possible alternatives.‖ Classifications of Decision-making styles as done by Lipham and Hoeh covers almost all aspects classified by others. The classifications form the typology of decision making which includes Routine Decision Making, Compromise Decision Making, and Heuristic Decision Making. In this study, a connection between the decision-making style of principals of senior secondary schools and their teaching experiences is explored. Principals often face problems with responsibilities, where decision making becomes extremely important. Decision making is the product of evaluation and reason, which is a very important tool for the principal through which he is able to fulfill his organizational goals. Various researches suggest that the survival of an organization depends on secondary schools of Kumaon Mandal of Uttarakhand State with their teaching experience. The whole research paper is divided into ten sections.

Shah (2018) studied ―Decision Making St yle of Secondary School Head Masters With Reference To Their Length of Service.‖ The sample of 200 headmasters was drawn through systematic random sampling technique from different government secondary schools of Kashmir valley. Tools used for data collection was Decision Making Style Scale by Ganihar (2015). Statistical analysis revealed that senior headmasters apply heuristic type of decision as compared to junior headmasters who were observed in routine decision-making styles. The study also reveals that there is no significance difference between lengths of service on making the compromise style of decisions as both groups of headmasters applying compromise type of style. The study of Harrera (2010) ―Principal Leadership and School Effectiveness: Perspective from Principals and Teachers‖ aims at examining extent of Principal‘s engagement in seven leadership practices, identified for enhancing student achievement in the literature and justified whether the level of engagement is associated with school success. Sample for the study includes 9893 principals and 56354 teachers (collected by national center for education statistics, in 1999-2000 school and staffing survey).The findings indicate high level of engagement of principals in leadership practices associated with order, discipline and resources whereas it shows low level of engagement in culture, focus and intellectual st imulat ion. On the other hand teacher‘s perception about principals engagement in intellectual stimulation and input is of high level whereas engagement in culture, order, discipline, resources and focus is at low level. The logistic regression analysis is used to predict the school success from Principals‘ and teachers‘ point of view. For school success resources, focus and culture are statistically significant predictors from Principals‘ perspective. Mokena (2003) conducted a study on ―Exploring Effective Decision Making of Principals in Secondary Schools in the Free State Province.‖ The aim of this study was to explore how teachers, parents, learners and principals experienced decision- making in their school. Sample collected for the study is from Thabo Mojuksanayana Education district of the Free State Province, South Africa. Tool Applied was an open-ended questionnaire, individual and focus group interview. The main findings were that decision making in secondary schools still adhered to pre- democratic formal lines of authority. It also reveals that democratic models of governance were insufficiently used or overlooked by the

3.1 To find out the relation in routine decision making style of principals of senior secondary schools and their teaching experiences. 3.2 To find out the relation in compromise decision making style of principals of senior secondary schools and their teaching experiences. 3.3 To find out the relation in heuristic decision making style of principals of senior secondary schools and their teaching experiences.

H1: There is no significant correlation between routine decision making style of principals of senior secondary schools and their teaching experiences. H2: There is no significant correlation between compromise decision making style of principals of senior secondary schools and their teaching experiences. H3: There is no significant correlation between heuristic decision making style of principals of senior secondary schools and their teaching experiences.

5.1 Decision Making Style - Decision-making style in the present study refers to the dominant set of scores measured by the Decision Making Scale designed by Noorjehan N. Ganihar. 5.2 Principal of Senior Secondary School - A principal is a person who is appointed as a head of the senior secondary school. 5.3 Teaching Experiences - In the present study experience means number of years of service of Principals.

The sample for the present investigation is consisted of seventy six (76) principals drawn from various senior secondary schools of different blocks of six districts of Kumaon Mandal of Uttarakhand State by adopting a stratified random sampling technique.

developed by Noorjehan. N. Ganihar (2005) is used as a tool.

The collected information was subjected to statistical treatment by calculating Pearson Chi Square and Contingency Coefficients between typology of decision making style (Routine, Compromise, and Heuristic) and teaching experiences of the principals of senior secondary schools.

In order to fulfill the objectives of the study three hypotheses have been formulated. To test hypotheses we establish a correlation between routine, compromise and heuristic decision making style and teaching experiences of principals of senior secondary schools. Each finding is analysed and interpreted as follows H1: There is no significant correlation between routine decision making style of principals and category of senior secondary school. The table 1 shows Pearson Chi-square between Routine Decision Making Style and Teaching Experience of principals of senior secondary school. The calculated chi-square statistic has a value of 411.636 at 322 degree of freedom. Since this is greater than the critical value of 364.847 (0.05 level of significance), the null hypothesis i.e. ―there is no relat ion between Routine decision making style and teaching experiences‖ is rejected indicating that the association between Routine decision making styles and teaching experiences is significant at the 0.05 level.

The table 2 indicates the value of contingency coefficient between routine decision making style and teaching experience which is 0.919. Since this value is more than 0.5 approaching 1, therefore it indicates that there is very strong association between routine decision making style and teaching experience as significant at 0.001level. The association between routine decision making and experiences as teacher has been presented with the help of scatter diagram which is used to represent the relations between these variables. For better illustration the data are presented graphically as best fitted curve as shown in figure 1. Figure 1 represents the variation of score of routine decision making style of 76 Principals of senior secondary schools of six districts of Kumaon Mandal of Uttarakhand State with their teaching experiences. The average score of routine decision making style varies in between approximately 2.00 to 14.00 as the experiences of Principals varies from six years to thirty eight years. The table 3 shows Pearson Chi-square between Compromise Decision Making Style and Teaching Experience of principals of senior secondary school.

H2: There is no significant correlation between compromise decision making style of principals and category of senior secondary school.

The calculated chi-square statistic has a value of 424.871 at 414 degree of freedom. Since this is less than the critical value of 462.440 (0.05 level of significance), the null hypothesis i.e. ―there is no relation between compromise decision making style and teaching experiences‖ is accepted indicating that there is no association between compromise decision making style and teaching experiences. Table 4 indicates the value of contingency coefficient between compromise decision making style and teaching experience of principals of senior secondary schools which is 0.921.

The appearing value of contingency coefficient shows no significant relation at 0.05 and 0.01 level between compromise decision making style and teaching experience of principals of senior secondary schools. The approximate level of significance is 0.345 (>>0.05). Thus there is very weak or negligible relationship between compromise decision making style and teaching experience of principals of senior secondary schools. The relation between compromise decision making and experience of teacher is been presented with the help of scatter diagram. For better illustration the data are presented graphically as best fitted curve as shown in figure 2. Figure 2 represents the variation of score of compromise decision making style of 76 Principals of senior secondary schools of six districts of Kumaon Mandal of Uttarakhand State with their teaching experiences. The average score of compromise decision making style varies in between approximately 11.00 to 22.00 as the experiences of Principals varies from six years to thirty eight years. H3: There is no significant correlation between heuristic decision making style of principals and category of senior secondary school. Table 5 indicates the value of Pearson Chi-square between heuristic decision making style and teaching experience of principals of senior secondary schools which is 540.544. The calculated chi-square statistic has a value of 540.544 at 575 Degree of freedom (appendix-). Since this is less than the critical value of 631.893 (0.05 level of significance), the null hypothesis i.e. ―there is no relation between heuristic decision making style and teaching experiences‖ is accepted indicating that there is no association between heuristic decision making style and teaching experiences.

Table 6 shows the value of contingency coefficient between heuristic decision making style and teaching experience of principals of senior secondary schools which is 0.936 which is significant at 0.845 approximately.

The calculating value of contingency coefficient shows no significant relation at 0.05 and 0.01level between heuristic decision making style and teaching experience of principals of senior secondary schools. The approximate level of significance is 0.845 (>>0.05). Thus there is very weak or negligible relationship between heuristic decision making style and teaching experience of principals of senior secondary schools. The weak relation between heuristic decision making and experience of teacher is been presented with the help of scatter diagram, which is used to represent the correlation between these variables. For better illustration the data are presented graphically as shown in figure 3. Figure 3 represents the variation of score of heuristic decision making style of 76 Principals of senior secondary schools of six districts of Kumaon Mandal of Uttarakhand State with their teaching experiences. The average score of heuristic decision making style varies in between approximately 17.00 to 33.00 as the experiences of Principals varies from six years to thirty eight years.

Likewise, the analysis shows that the routine decision-making style of principals is highly associated with the teaching experience of principals, but compromise and heuristic decision making style is negligibly associated with the teaching experience of principals of senior secondary schools. The score of routine decision-making style is strongly associated with the teaching experience of principals of senior secondary school. It can be concluded that principals having more teaching experiences use a routine type of decision making frequently. There is no significant association between teaching experiences and compromise decision-making style. It can be concluded that the teaching experiences of principals of senior secondary schools do not affect the way of selecting a compromise decision-making style. The score of heuristic decision making is negligibly associated with the score of teaching experiences of principals of senior secondary schools. It can be concluded that the principals does not ignore part of the information to make quick decisions.

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Department of Education, M. B. Govt. P G College, Haldwani, Uttarakhand, India