Principal’s Personal Characteristics and Conflict Management in Kwara State Secondary Schools, Nigeria

This paper is a report on a study on the influence of principal’s personal characteristics on conflict management in Kwara State secondary schools. It is a descriptive survey carried out ex-post facto. Five hundred principals and teachers were randomly selected as respondents from senior secondary schools in Kwara State. A Researcher designed instrument tagged: “Principal’s Personal Characteristics and Conflict Management Questionnaire” (PPCCMQ) was used to collect relevant information from the respondents. The instrument was validated by six experts from the Faculty of Education, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria and subjected to test re-test technique to ascertain reliability coefficient value of 0.78. Four research hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was used to test the research hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The finding of the study indicated that a significant relationship existed between principal’s personal characteristics and conflict management in Kwara State secondary schools (calculated r-value =0.782 > critical r-value 0.195, p < 0.05, df = 498). On this note, it was recommended, among others, that principal should understand the cause of conflict in the school system and use appropriate strategies to ameliorate the situation based on personal characteristics.