INFLUENCE OF PERCEIVED TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP OF SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ON FOLLOWERSHIP STYLES OF TEACHERS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The study focused on identifying the influence of perceived transformational leadership of school principals on the followership styles of the graduate teachers in Colombo district public schools in Sri Lanka. Hence, this study intends to achieve four research objectives: 1) Identify the followership styles among the graduate teachers in Colombo district public schools; 2) Examine the association between followership styles of graduate teachers in public schools and their demographic variables; 3) Identify the level of transformational leadership of schools principals perceived by the graduate teachers in public schools; and 4) Examine the influence of perceived transformational leadership of principals on the followership styles of graduate teachers in public schools. A questionnaire survey (n=496) based on Kelley’s (1992) Followership Questionnaire and Bass & Avolio’s (1990) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was administered to collect data on followership styles of respondents and level of perceived transformational leadership of their principals. Semi – structured interviews were conducted with ten purposively selected teachers to represent different categories of followership styles. The highest number of the graduate teachers in Colombo district public schools were effective followers. Age, teaching service and the service under the incumbent principal of the respondents revealed no significant association with their followership styles whereas gender and school type of the respondent teachers revealed a significant association with their followership styles. 45% of the respondents perceived that their principals frequently display transformational leadership characteristics. Finally, the results suggested that higher levels of perceived transformational leadership of principals increases the probability of graduate teachers to be effective followers and decreases their probability to be moderately effective and ineffective followers.