ENSURING STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS: A CASE STUDY EXAMINING HEADTEACHERS’ LEADERSHIP STYLES

This study aimed to develop an understanding of secondary school headteachers’ practices related to their leadership styles for ensuring students’ academic achievements in Kashmiri schools. Leadership styles to be studied in this research were three named Autocratic, Democratic, and Laissez-faire. This study used a qualitative research approach, and data were gathered through semi-structured interviews. The criterion sampling technique was used to select 12 secondary school headteachers from Mirpur city. The research instrument used to collect the data from research participants was a self-constructed interview guide consisting of 20 open-ended questions. Most of the headteachers held the conception that instead of a single leadership style, the use of multiple leadership styles is effective for managing teachers in order to improve students’ academic achievement. Moreover, these Headteachers were keen to improve the academic achievement of the students. For this purpose, they use different leadership styles. It is also clear from the data that most Headteachers prefer a democratic leadership style to use for their staff and students. However, sometimes they rely on other leadership styles—but with the aim of improving the academic achievement of the students. Keywords: leadership, headteachers, school, Kashmiri, academic achievement