PRINCIPALS’ COMMUNICATION SKILLS: A PREDICTOR OF TEACHERS’MORALE IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN SOUTHWESTERNNIGERIA

Abstract

An integral part of school leadership that greatly affects teachers' morale and school performances overall is
communication. The study looked at principals' communication skills, especially clarity, openness, and feedback,
to see how they influenced the morale of public secondary school teachers in the Southwestern part of Nigeria.
The researchers employed a descriptive research design selecting a total of 975 respondents made up of 75
principals and 900 teachers chosen through multistage sampling from the six Southwestern states in Nigeria. For
data collection, the researchers used two self-designed instruments. Data were analyzed using regression statistics
at a 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that principal communication clarity (F=38.624, p<0.05),
communication openness (F=45.922, p<0.05), and feedback strategies (F=52.318, p<0.05) significantly
influenced teachers' morale. Among the predictors, feedback strategies contributed mostly (β=0.234), followed
by openness (β=0.198) and clarity (β=0.177). The study concluded that principals’ communication skills have a
substantial and positive influence on teachers’ morale. It was recommended that school administrators and
educational policymakers should strengthen principals’ communication training, particularly in clarity, feedback,
and openness, to enhance teachers morale.