Clifford Owusu-Diawuo

This critical review explores the impact of principals’ leadership styles on teacher job performance and student achievement in Ghanaian schools. Leadership significantly influences teacher motivation, instructional quality, and student outcomes. The review examines transformational, instructional, transactional, democratic, distributed, and laissez-faire leadership, highlighting their effectiveness in different school settings. Transformational, instructional, and democratic leadership foster collaboration and academic success, while transactional and laissez-faire leadership may present limitations. Inadequate resource and infrastructure, lack of leadership training and professional development, overcrowded classroom and staff shortage, political interference and community pressure, resistance to change among teachers, low parental and community engagement, emotional stress and burnout, policy inconsistencies and lack of role clarity, and limited technology and capacity hinder effective school leadership. Addressing these issues requires leadership training, increased funding, supportive policies, and stakeholder collaboration. Strengthening leadership capacity and fostering an inclusive learning environment are essential for improving educational outcomes and national development.