Leadership Roles and Service Quality Provision in Public Preschool Education in Regional Centers in Mindanao

Abstract

This study was conducted to ascertain the views of school administrators, teachers and parents on leadership roles and service quality provision in public preschool education. It also aimed to study the relationship between the leadership roles and that of service quality as perceived by the participants. The 30 school administrators, 270 preschool teachers, and 389 preschool parents who participated in this study were purposively selected from thirty (30) different public preschools in regional centers in Mindanao.

A descriptive survey method was employed. Descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages, ranks, means, and standard deviations) were computed to determine the perspectives of the administrator-respondents on the importance of leadership and service quality. Factor analysis was used on teacher- and parent-respondents' responses to identify the key factors contributing to service quality in public preschool education.

The participants identified leadership roles in managing the teaching and learning process as the most important leadership role contributing to quality of service in public preschool education. However, the three groups of participants differed in their views about service quality provision. For administrators, they identified the quality of health and wellbeing and quality of curriculum on topping other service quality provisions. For teachers, quality of school values comes first while parents chose quality of school atmosphere as the most important one. Finally, based on the result of the hypothesis testing, there proved to be a positive link between leadership roles and service quality provision. This indicates that leadership roles could explain to some extent the provision of service quality in public preschool education.

In light of the findings, some recommendations are offered. Among the suggestions are: to effectively enforce the implementation of the minimum standards and operational guidelines for preschool education; to allocate more financial resources to ensure that structural and process features of public preschools are improved; to improve the coordination of key players in preschool education, with emphasis on involving the parents; to improve leadership effectiveness in administrators; and to improve the skills of teachers through professional development.