PRINCIPALS’ INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP AS A PREDICTOR OF TEACHERS’ CLASSROOM PRACTICES IN SCHOOLS: POLICY IMPLICATION FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION

Literature abound on the lack of teachers' commitment to instructional duties in secondary schools in Nigeria. This ugly trend necessitated this research on the predictive power of principals' instructional leadership in teachers' classroom practices in secondary schools in South East, Nigeria. A correlational survey research design was adopted for the study using a sample of 794 teachers. Instructional leadership Questionnaire and Classroom Practices Questionnaire were used for data collection. The items of the instruments demonstrated good internal consistency reliability indices. Data collected were analysed using simple regression analysis to answer the research question and the corresponding hypothesis. The finding of the study revealed that principals' instructional leadership had a significant (p< .05) positive prediction of teachers' classroom practices of teacher. This finding has policy implication for early childhood care due to the fact that children will be better taken care of at an early stage by their teachers only when the instructional leadership of the head teacher is effective.