COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TEAMWORK AND COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES APPLIED BY PRINCIPALS FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN BENUE STATE

Abstract

The study compared teamwork and communication strategies applied by principals for quality assurance in public and private secondary schools in Benue State. Two research questions guided the study and five hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population of the study consisted of 13,559 respondents (3,878 teachers in public and 9,681 teachers in private) secondary schools in Benue State, Nigeria. The sample size for this study consisted of 688 respondents (204 teachers of public and 484 teachers of private) secondary schools using drawn using proportionate stratified sampling technique. A researcher-developed questionnaire titled ‘‘Teamwork and Communication Strategies Applied by Principals for Quality Assurance Questionnaire (TCSPQAQ)’’ were used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts who were lecturers from the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. Using Cronbach alpha for test of internal consistency, the co-efficient for Clusters I-V of instrument were, 0.77 and 0.82 respectively and overall coefficient was 0.80. The researcher together with five research assistants collected data for the study using the direct approach method and 98% return was recorded. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses. The results of the study showed among others that the teamwork and communication strategies applied by principals for quality assurance are similar in public and private secondary schools in Benue State. It was also found that there is no significant difference in the mean ratings of public and private secondary school teachers on the teamwork and communication strategies applied by their principals for quality assurance in Benue State. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that principals of public and private schools should be provided opportunity to attend annual seminar acquire more skills and knowledge needed to improve their communication strategies.