Description
student conformity to school rules is critical to achievement of academic goals. The objective of the study was to determine the relationship between principals’ Transactional leadership style and students’ conformity to rules in Public Secondary Schools in Nakuru County, Kenya. The study was underpinned on the Social Control Theory by Hirschi (1969). The study adopted a correlational research design. The target population was 338 Principals, 338 Deputy Principals, 3426 teachers and 116374 students in 338 public secondary schools in Nakuru County. Stratified random sampling was used to select 100 schools. Purposive sampling was used to select 100 Principals while Proportionate and simple random sampling was used to select 346 teachers and 383 students. Ten percent of the Deputy Principals were selected. Questionnaires were used to collect data from principals, teachers and students, while interviews were used to collect data from Deputy Principals. Test – retest reliability returned a coefficient of 0.70 indicating that the instruments were reliable. The finding revealed a significant positive relationship between transactional leadership style and students’ conformity to school rules(r=0.410; p=0.000).This implies that when transactional leadership style was used by principals it enhances students’ conformity to school rules. It was concluded that principals’ transactional leadership style significantly related to students’ conformity to school rules. Therefore, it is important for school principals to provide rewards and recognition constantly to students who conform to school rules and reprimand to those students who do not conform to school rules. The study recommends that the principal should be willing to use suspension and even repeated suspension where necessary as a tool for dealing with students demonstrating chronic behavior problems that disrupt the school climate. The findings of the study will help principals to be proactive in handling issues in the school andn with
Key terms: Transactional, leadership, style ,conformity, rules
