RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRINCIPALS’ COMMUNICATION STYLE AND SCHOOL CLIMATE

Abstract

The objectives of this research are to study the prominent communication styles of principals, to study the types of school climate and to investigate relationship between principals’ communication style and school climate in Basic Education High Schools, Sittwe Township, Rakhine State. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used in this study. Principals’ communication style was investigated with seven dimensions of the lexical side of communication styles developed by de Vries et al. (2009). School climate was studied based on five dimensions of Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire for Secondary School (OCDQ-RS) developed by Hoy et al. (1991).  176 teachers from selected Basic Education High Schools participated in this study. Descriptive statistics, Independent Samples t Test, and One-Way ANOVA, and Pearson Correlation were used in this study. The findings indicated that the three principals of School A, B and C practiced most expressiveness style. Niceness was the prominent style in School D and preciseness was the prominent style in School E perceived by teachers. There was no significant difference in principals’ communication styles grouped by gender. It was found that the four schools of A, B, C, and E had closed climate while School D had an open climate. There were no significant differences in teachers’ perceptions on school climate grouped by gender, position, and years of teaching service. There was positively moderate relationship (r=.522**, p<0.01) between principals’ communication style and school climate.

Keywords: Principals’ Communication Style, School Climate.