Principals’ Conflict Management Strategies and Students’ Discipline in Federal Unity Schools in South East Nigeria

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between principals’ conflict management strategies and students’ discipline in Federal Unity Schools in South-East Nigeria. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The correlational survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 3,547 SS2 students from Federal Unity Schools in South-East Nigeria. A sample of 400 SS2 students was selected using multistage sampling technique. The instruments for data collection were two structured questionnaires which were face validated by two experts in educational management and one expert in measurement and evaluation. The instruments were pilot tested and reliability coefficients determined using Cronbach Alpha reliability method. The test of reliability using Cronbach Alpha yielded reliability co-efficient of 0.82 and 0.88 for clusters A and B respectively with an overall reliability co-efficient of 0.85 for PCMSQ and 0.84 for SDQ. Pearson product moment correlation was used to analyse data for the study. Findings revealed that principals’ collaboration conflict management strategies and principals’ accommodation conflict management strategies have significant and high positive relationship with students’ discipline in Federal Unity Schools in South-East Nigeria. Based on these findings, the researcher recommended that the Federal Ministry of Education should establish regular training programs for principals, which will improve their capacity for collaboration conflict management strategies. It was also recommended that the Federal Ministry of Education should provide principals with sufficient support that will enable them to effectively implement accommodation conflict management strategies.