The Effect of Principals’ Adaptive Leadership Practice on Teachers’ Work Engagement in Secondary Schools of Central Gondar Zone

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of principals’ adaptive leadership practice on teachers’ work engagement in secondary schools of central Gondar zone. Explanatory sequential mixed design was employed. The size of the study population was 995. Of these, 283 teachers were selected by using simple random sampling technique while 4 school principals and 2 supervisors were purposely selected. Questionnaire and interview were used to collect the data. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The result of one sample t-test and interview indicated that adaptive leadership practice and teacher work engagement were observed to some extent in the workplace. There was a statistically significant moderate relationship between adaptive leadership practice and teacher work engagement. The result of multiple regression indicated that 34.2% of the variance in work engagement was significantly predicted by the six dimensions of adaptive leadership. The result of two-way ANOVA indicated that a significant difference was not found among teachers in their perception of work engagement based on gender, educational qualification, and work experience. Resistance to change, lack of trust and collaboration among teachers and principals, lack of trained principals in leadership positions, and lack of human and financial resources were found the major challenges hindered the implementation of adaptive leadership. Therefore, it is concluded that adaptive leadership has a significant effect on work engagement. Thus, training programs need to be developed to improve the status of adaptive leadership and teachers' work engagement in the study area.