Leadership competencies of the United Methodist Church Northwest Philippines annual conference preschool administrators

Abstract

This study generally examines the governance of the United Methodist Church-Northwest Philippines Annual Conference-owned preschools by identifying the leadership competencies of the administrators of these schools and detects significant differences of such competencies between the lay and clergy administrators. The offshoot of this study is a proposed manual of operational procedures and guideline, tailored along the leadership competencies of the administrators. This study is aimed at examining the leadership competencies of the lay and clergy administrators of the UMC-NWPAC-owned preschools and at identifying the differences in their leadership competencies. The result of this study is a proposed manual of operations and guidelines for the schools. Specifically, the study sought answers to the following questions: 1. What are the leadership competencies of school administrators of NWPAC-UMC schools along the following: a. Resilience b. Personal behavior c. Student achievement d. Decision making e. Communication f. Faculty development g. Leadership development h. Time, task, and project management i. Technology j. Learning and professional development. 2. What is the difference in the leadership competencies of NWPAC-UMC lay and clergy school administrators? This study made us of a descriptive-comparative design. Moreover, the survey method was used to gather data through questionnaires. This study adopted the leadership domains checklist developed by Douglas Reeves as the data gathering tool. The researcher personally floated the questionnaires to the twenty (20) UMC-NWPAC preschools. Such questionnaires were likewise personally retrieved by the researcher. Follow-up informal interviews were also conducted to triangulate the results. The data were analyzed and interpreted using both descriptive and inferential statistical procedures. Frequency and percentage distribution were used to measure the level of leadership competencies of the UMC-NWPAC preschools’ administrators. The scaled items were interpreted by using the following arbitrary scale points: weighted mean, frequency, and percentage. The t-test for independent groups was used to identify differences in the leadership competencies of the school administrators. Based on the research problems, the following were the findings of this research: 1. Both the clergy and the lay are “proficient” in the ten (10) leadership competencies. 2. The clergy administrators possess the highest level of competency, specifically on communication. Meanwhile, the highest leadership competency of the lay administrators is decision making. In light of the foregoing finding, the following conclusions are drawn: 1. Both the lay and the clergy administrators are equipped with the necessary leadership competencies needed in managing their respective preschool institutions. 2. The clergy and the lay administrators excel differently in terms of their leadership competencies. Based on the aforementioned findings, the following are concluded. 1. The school board or the education committee of the respective church council should boost further the leadership competencies o the administrators by sending them to various trainings and conferences where they can be more updated on the current trends in educational administration. 2. The school board should focus on developing potential educational leaders from their existing human resources through “shepherding” and “mentoring.” 3. The conference leadership shall recommend to the UMC-NWPAC preschools that the proposed manual of operations be used as a guide to all UMC-related schools.