The second year English language lecturers` leadership styles, their teaching behaviours, and the teaching quality at the University of Djibouti : students` perceptions

Abstract

Students’ strong and weak points diverge, but many a time, the fact that they possess the same abilities and ways of learning is assumed and the principle of diversity is highly neglected. While this issue is of great concern, a review of the literature has revealed that studies regarding the lecturers’ leadership styles, their teaching behaviours, and the students’ perceptions on the teaching quality are still lacking on Djiboutian university students. To this end, this study uses a descriptive analysis and an inferential analysis to respectively explore the second-year English language lecturers’ leadership styles, their teaching behaviours, and the teaching quality at the University of Djibouti from the perceptions of the students; and to test the relationships between the three variables, as well as the differences in students’ perceptions vis-à-vis the leadership styles and teaching behaviours used by the lecturers. The convenience sampling technique was adopted to collect the required data for this study. A questionnaire was distributed through WhatsApp to 50 second-year students who were studying English Language and Literature at the University of Djibouti. The sample size consisted of 29 (58%) boys and 21 (42%) girls. The first instrument was the “leadership style questionnaire” produced by Stellar Leadership; the second one was the “teachers’ behaviours inventory” by Harry G. Murray of the University of Western Ontario, Canada; and the third one was the “sample student survey questions” used by Missouri’s educator evaluation system in 2013, which they adapted from Ron Ferguson’s Tripod Project 2011. Both the descriptive and inferential results of this study were compared to Carl Roger’s humanistic learning theory to check whether Djiboutian students were provided with conducive learning facilities that allowed effective learning to take place. Hence, they revealed that though the autocratic leadership style is the most used leadership style at the University of Djibouti; there is however, a partial sharing of decision making between senior students and the lecturers - which is found in the humanistic learning theory. Moreover, writing keywords on the boards (known as a focus on the continuous learning process in the humanistic learning theory), smiling while teaching, being strict, not accepting any errors, as well as reviewing past lessons at the start of each session (also known as a focus on the continuous learning process in the humanistic learning theory) are found to be the teaching behaviours of the lecturers in this University. Interestingly, the teaching quality at the University of Djibouti is believed to be good because students felt that they were being cared for, encouraged, and believed to have lecturers who responded to most of their queries (this element is also found in the humanistic learning theory). Ultimately, it was also found that the lecturers’ teaching behaviours reflected their teaching quality; whereas no different perceptions were found with regard to students’ gender on the different leadership styles or teaching behaviours used by the lecturers.