Exploring the Relationship Between Strategic Decision-Making and Perseverance in Secondary School Leadership

Abstract

The research examined the correlation between strategic decision-making and perseverance in the leadership of secondary schools in District Gujrat, Pakistan. Self-developed instruments to measure the two constructs were used in a quantitative correlational research design. The sample size included 250 secondary school heads (125 males and 125 females) out of 325 head teachers was chosen through random sampling. Descriptive statistics was used to find the measures of the strategic decision-making and perseverance, and Pearson correlation was presented to investigate the association between the variables. The results showed that the male heads and female heads were moderate to high in terms of strategic decision making and perseverance. Moreover, the findings showed that there was a strong positive correlation existing between strategic decision-making and perseverance which implied that school leaders who had better strategic decision-making abilities had a higher chance of portraying perseverance in leadership. The paper concludes that encouraging the strategizing decision-making abilities can make secondary school heads more perseverant, thus adding to more effective and resilient school leadership. It was recommended that leadership training, gender-inclusive support, and policy-level initiatives be enhanced as ways of strengthening educational leadership practices.

Keywords: Strategic decision-making, Perseverance, School leadership, Secondary school heads, Correlational study