education

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.

This review identified that the quality of technological infrastructure, internet connectivity, and
student-related factors are critical factors influencing Canada’s effectiveness, equal access and
quality of distance education programs. It is recommended that access to high-speed internet
connectivity be expanded to rural and low-income communities through public-private
partnerships; organisation of training programs on the use of educational technologies and its
associated devices and support systems for students, instructors and communities through publicprivate partnerships; and the design and implementation of evidence-based distance education
learning environment. Effective collaboration and communication among instructors and
students significantly impact students’ learning outcomes and their future success through
distance education.