Abstract:
Parents are key stakeholders in providing leadership in schools. They are
chiefly responsible for guiding behaviour of their growing children, and have
consequently been blamed for the development of deviant behaviour by teenagers in boarding schools, as frequently reported in the Kenyan media. This study was conducted to find out how teenagers perceived their parents’ leadership style and if the boarding school experience, which separates teenagers from parents for long periods of time, may also be a contributor to this deviant behaviour. This was a descriptive study where a sample of 100 students was selected from 3 high schools in Kiambu County. Using a structured questionnaire, the respondents gave their opinions on their parents’ leadership style, their boarding school experience and their own assessment about their behaviour. The data collected from the quantitative research showed that most teenagers perceived the leadership style of their parents to be authoritative, displaying balance in responsiveness and demandingness. However, most of them felt that their parents do not take their wishes into consideration before asking them to do something, and many felt that they are not close to their parents because of being in boarding school. The results also showed that in aspects of behaviour, most teenagers found that the boarding school experience helped them and upon self-assessment, most teenagers revealed that they are generally obedient, with few admitting cases of deviant behaviour. The researcher proposed an avenue to be created by the Ministry of Education that will allow school administrators to increase parents’ involvement in boarding schools, in order to encourage closeness to their children and curb development of deviant behaviour by adolescents. A further study on teachers’ leadership styles was also proposed.