Principals' Encouragement of Teacher Collaboration and Support for Peer Coaching in Government Secondary Schools, South West Region, of Cameroon
Copyright (c) 2019 by author(s) and International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development Journal. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) (http:/creativecommons.org/licenses/by /4.0) ABSTRACT Within an education culture striving for continuous improvement, there is a constant need to ensure the appropriate skills, knowledge and actions of staff match the changing needs of the system. Coaching can assist in this process of 'upskilling' There is great interest in educational leadership in the early part of the 21st century because of the widespread belief that the quality of leadership makes a significant difference to the school and student outcomes. There is also increasing recognition that schools require effective leaders and managers if they are to provide the best possible education for their learners. Schools need trained and committed teachers but they, in turn, need the leadership of highly effective principals and support from other senior and m idle managers. The purpose of this study was to provide answers to the following questions: Do principals encourage a collaborative work place culture among teachers? Do principals provide release time to enable teachers to work with each other as coaches? Do principals ensure that teachers have the needed material and financial support for peer coaching? A descriptive survey research design was used. Data was collected from 288 teachers in 8 schools and 4 divisions of the South West Region using a questionnaire. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 12.0 for windows and reported using frequencies, percentages and means. The results of the data analysis revealed as follows: Principals of government secondary school in Cameroon do not encourage teacher collaboration. Of the 12 questionnaire items designed to answer this question, none of the items had a mean of 3.2 which is the cut off mean. It is recommended that Principals of government secondary schools in Cameroon should take up courses in Educational Administration in the area of Educational Leadership at University level in order to update their knowledge, skills and attitudes in this area. Principals should work in collaboration with the Faculty of Education of the University of Buea and organize seminars to acquaint teachers with the practice of peer coaching. Principals should invest in buying relevant books in educational leadership (peer coaching) and create time to read them in order to keep abreast with current school leadership practices.