Effect of A Contextualized Educational Administration Training Programme on Principals' Innovative Governance Practices in Public Secondary Schools in Kogi State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined the effect of a contextualized educational administration training programme on principals’ innovative governance practices in public secondary schools in Kogi State, Nigeria, using a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test control group design. Three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. The population comprised 312 principals of public secondary schools in Kogi State. A sample of 130 principals, comprising 74 males and 56 females, was drawn through stratified random sampling from twenty selected public secondary schools, with ten schools assigned to the experimental group and ten to the control group. Data were collected using the Principals’ Innovative Governance Practices Scale (PIGPS), a structured four-point rating scale questionnaire, which yielded a Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of 0.91. The experimental group participated in a contextualized educational administration training programme designed to strengthen curriculum innovation, staff development, and ICT integration practices, while the control group received no intervention during the study period. Mean, standard deviation, and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) were used to answer the research questions and test the hypotheses respectively at the 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that principals exposed to the contextualized educational administration training programme recorded significantly higher post-test mean scores in curriculum innovation practices, staff development practices, and ICT integration practices than their counterparts in the control group. The programme also demonstrated a significant overall effect on principals’ innovative governance practices. The study concludes that a contextualized educational administration training programme is an effective strategy for enhancing innovative governance practices among principals of public secondary schools. It is recommended that educational authorities should institutionalize contextualized professional development programmes for school principals, State Ministries of Education should provide sustained funding for context-responsive capacity-building initiatives, and the Teachers Service Commission should incorporate innovative governance competencies into principals’ performance evaluation frameworks to sustain improvements in school leadership effectiveness.