Perceived Leadership Capacities of Elementary School Head Teachers: Potential Differences of Gender and Experience

Successful leadership mainly depends upon the knowledge and understanding about various leadership skills together with leader’s personal capacity to execute these skills efficiently. Elementary school head teachers, therefore, require notable expertise to professionally perform their important administrative responsibilities for achieving the school goals and objectives. In this context, this survey study was mainly conducted to investigate the extent of the leadership capacities of elementary school head teachers’ they possessed and differences in their views when grouped by their gender and administrative experience. To achieve the objective, a questionnaire comprising 24-items with six subscales developed by Ng (2010) was adapted with minor changes. The questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 363 head teachers randomly selected from 1014 elementary schools of Multan division and finally 336 (92.6%) responded. Results of descriptive statistical analyses suggest that the participants believed with high consensus that they were not well equipped with needed leadership skills in four areas specifically in the area of ‘quality assurance and accountability’. Inferential statistical tests revealed no significant differences in participants’ perceptions based on their gender. Significant differences, however, were found in their views based on their administrative experience. The conclusions of this study point to the relevant strategies for planning continuous professional development of elementary school head teachers in Pakistan.