Description:
The purpose of this study which employed the mixed research methods was to examine the role
of leadership styles (authoritarian, democratic and laissez-faire) on job satisfaction among
secondary school teachers in Geita Town Council. The study was guided by the Path-goal theory.
The study used embedded research design whereby both quantitative and qualitative data were
collected concurrently through a self-completion questionnaire. Two types of questionnaires
were administered to respondents; Leadership Style Questionnaire (LSQ) and Teacher Job
Satisfaction Questionnaire (TJSQ). Leadership style questionnaire was administered to both
school Heads and teachers while teacher job satisfaction questionnaire was administered to
teachers only. Four open-ended items were attached to TJSQ in order to get qualitative data to
supplement the quantitative data. Stratified random sampling was used as the preferred type of
probability sampling technique for this research. The sample size was 217 secondary school
teachers. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse quantitative the data with the help of
Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 20 version. The qualitative data were
thematically analyzed. Findings demonstrated that authoritarian leadership style plays a negative
role on teacher job satisfaction. Democratic leadership style and laissez-faire leadership style
play a positive role on job satisfaction of teachers. The study established further that secondary
school teachers in Geita Town Council were not satisfied with their jobs due to the low salary
which did not satisfy their needs, poor working environments such as shortage of teachers’
accommodation and a shortage of teaching and learning materials. The study concluded that
democratic leadership style and laissez-faire leadership style play a positive role on teachers’ job
satisfaction but authoritarian leadership style plays a negative role on job satisfaction of teachers
in Geita Town Council.