The Effect of Principals’ Supervision Techniques on Teachers’ Effectiveness in Government Secondary Schools in Southwest Region of Cameroon

The study examined the extent principals carry out instructional supervision in government secondary schools in the Southwest Region of Cameroon. The study was guided by three specific objectives: to examine the extent principals are using classroom visitation as to improve on teachers’ effectiveness; assess the extent peer coaching is used by principals to improve on teachers’ effectiveness; and the extent general staff meetings are used to improve on teachers’ effectiveness. A convergent design was used and 206 teachers and 400 students in form four, five, lower, and upper sixth were sample. The simple random sampling and the purposive sampling techniques were used. Questionnaire and interview guide were the instruments utilized. SPSS 25 was used to analyse the quantitative data while qualitative data were analysed thematically. The findings revealed that classroom visitation (R-value =0.282, p-value= p-value= 0.022) and peer coaching (R-value= 0.215, p-value= 0.038) had weak effect on teachers’ effectiveness and majority of teachers 75.0% (154) and 70.2% (144) respectively indicated that their principal does not adequately carry out classroom visitation and promote peer coaching among teachers. Only general staff meetings had moderate effect on teachers’ effectiveness (R-value=0.503, p-value= 0.000) although, 34.7% (72) of teachers expressed dissatisfaction with staff meetings because it frequently focuses on administrative issues and not pedagogic axes. Therefore, it was recommended that the government should initiate and implement policies on mandatory training of principals to impact them with the preferred knowledge, attitude, and technical skills for effective functioning in general and supervision in particular.