Role behaviour of head teachers and career commitment of public senior high schools teachers in the Berekum Municipality of Ghana

Abstract

Career commitment is an essential element for quality education delivery, teacher retention and career satisfaction. The ability of heads of institutions to create a supporting work environment for all staff and students and fostering their career development is critical in promoting the career commitment of teachers. This paper investigated how teachers of Senior High Schools in Berekum Municipality perceive their head teachers’ role behaviour in relation to the career commitment of the teacher. The cross-sectional survey design was used. The key instruments used for the data collection were the career commitment scale by Blau (1989) and perception of role behaviour scale developed for this study. The participants in the study were 238 senior high school teachers. The study revealed that teachers had moderate levels of career commitment and perception of their heads’ role behaviour. Overall, perception of role behaviour was found to have significantly predicted career commitment of the teachers. Importantly, two dimensions of the role behaviour construct: perception of school communication and ensuring safety/ security of staff and students were the significant predictors of teachers’ career commitment. The study recommends that head teachers should endeavour to promote effective communication with all relevant stakeholders, including teachers, parents, students and education authorities. Heads should also make efforts to promote a sense of safety and security among staff and students in their school. This study seems to be the first to investigate how teachers’ perception of the role behaviour of their heads predicts their career commitment in Ghana. The findings from this study have several educational and policy implications that have been discussed in the paper.

Key words: Role behaviour, career commitment, school safety and security, effective school communication