Influence of Principals’ Intellectual Stimulation on Students’ Performance at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education in Public Secondary Schools, Kenya

Transformational leadership is an ideal characteristic which enables the principals to engage with followers and raise consciousness about the significance of specific outcomes and new ways in which those outcomes might be achieved. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of principals’ intellectual stimulation on student academic performance in Kenya Certificate Secondary Examination (K.C.S.E) in Makueni County, Kenya. The objective that guided the study was to: assess how the principals’ intellectual stimulation influences students results at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education. with the hypothesis that there is no relationship between principals’ intellectual stimulation with students’ mean scores at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education Makueni County, Kenya. The study used transformational leadership theory by Burns (1978) which has four dimensions namely idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration; all of which are critical in determining academic achievement. The conceptual framework of this study is based on the relationship between the principal transformational with academic performance. The sample comprised of 111 principals, 729 teachers and 12 Ministry of Education officials drawn from 388 secondary schools. Questionnaires and interview guide were used to collect data. Validation of the questionnaires were through test re-test method and use of expert judgment. The coefficient value was 0.85 at alpha = 0.05. Data was analysed using both descriptive Pearson’s correlation coefficient that test showed a strong correlation for Intellectual stimulation and KCSE students’ mean scores. The result indicated a negative and strong correlation between intellection stimulation and students’ KCSE performance (r=-.195, p-value<0.05) respectively. It was concluded that principals’ collective sense of mission and valuing ideas of the followers increased performance. The following recommendations were made: KEMI to carry out transformational leadership seminars for the principals on intellectual practices. The Ministry of Education Policy makers should establish policies on transformational leadership. Teacher trainers especially the universities ought to review curriculum to include analysis of school managers and also have simulated situations.


INTRODUCTION
Transformational leadership and academic performance in secondary schools are two aspects that are crucial. The kind of leadership skill applied by the principal to the followers determines the performance. For instance, principal's leadership influence students' performance so that growth and development can be realized (Ndiritu, 2012). This leadership attracts positive effects on the follower's performance in the organization (Gardner, 2010). The findings by Saxe (2011) are consistent with Muia (2018) that schools need reforms through transformational dimensions to sustain achievement. Therefore, the principal transformational leadership dimensions' and academic performance are inseparable. "As its name implies, transformational leadership plays a pivotal role in precipitating change (Northouse, 2016). Therefore, a school principal as the leader should be in a position to adjust goals, direction and mission for practical reasons.
Moreover, becoming more effective in adopting intellectual stimulation behaviour changes the whole scenario of performance in the school (Veysel, 2014).
Intellectual stimulation is a component of transformational leadership which encourages followers to ask questions trigger their values as well as beliefs (Elkins, Keller and Sundi 2013).
Organizations achieve their goals successfully through the followers' hard work, dedication, and a culture of active thinking (Anjali & Anand, 2015). These qualifications allow the followers to become more active thus improve ways of solving problems (Tims, Bakker, and Xanthopoulou, 2011). This component involves the principals' high expectations from the followers in terms of performance. Intellection stimulation is a good practice for KCSE since it has a relationship with the principals' transformational leadership (Muia, (2018). Positive practices by the principals which can increase performance include inspire people to be creative when dealing with issues (Bell & Menguc, 2012;Podsakoff, MacKenzie and Bommer (2014).
Intellectual leadership dimension enables the leader to encourage and provide new ways of thinking to the followers in the organization (Liu, 2013).
One way of evaluating the intellectual stimulation of principals is by analysing their performance under the current education systems from 2013-2017. Therefore, all secondary school leaders regardless of the sectors are pressured by accountability for better results. Table   1 shows KCSE performance 2013 to 2017.

Literature Review
Intellectual stimulation is a dimension which is used by leaders to inspire people to be creative when dealing with issues (Bell & Menguc, 2012;Podsakoff, MacKenzie and Bommer (2014).
Intellectual stimulation also allows innovation among the followers (Sundi, 2013;(Griffin, Neal & Neale, 2013).). The principals who exhibit innovation and creativity in their leadership enables the students to get high marks in the examination. Intellectual stimulation of transformational leadership brings change in the school context. Intellectual leadership dimension enables the leader to encourage and provide new ways of thinking to the followers in the organization (Liu, 2013). Bellé (2013) agree that the new ways of thinking are about their beliefs and values. Bass & Riggio (2006) support that leaders who have intellectual stimulation involve followers in finding answers for many problems affecting the organization hence they often challenge old ways of doing things. Hadebe (2013) attributed intellectual stimulation as the most core element portrayed by the secondary school principals. However, the teachers felt that some of their knowledge and skills were not utilized by the principals an aspect that a transformational leader should consider in making all the followers feel important and appreciated, involved in decision making.
Muia (2018), finding show that intellectual stimulation elements positively contributed to KCSE examinations in public secondary schools. The principal's intellectual stimulation was high leading to a strong relationship toward teachers and students. This is an indication that performance was also high. Bolkan, Goodboy, and Griffin (2015) agree that when the principals who communicate this dimension change the classroom environment by motivating the students and their approaches to learning. Subsequently, teachers also influence the students' intrinsic motivation by applying the dimension of intellectual stimulation thus changing the students' approaches to learning. Notably, Robinson, LIoyd and Rowe (2008) point out that intellectual stimulation attracts good academic performance in examinations. This is because school principal use intellectual stimulation dimension to encourage teachers to develop new ways of approaching and solving issues hence it raises the eyebrows of the students in term of performance. Finally, a study by Liu (2013) postulate this dimension helps the followers to have new ways of thinking to enable the organization grow. Ndiritu (2012) found that poor results were as a result of ineffective practices by the school principals' and suggested on further training of the principals' intellectual stimulation characteristic. This will create a good relationship between the principal and the students hence improve student academic performance in schools. Scholars belief that inspiration motivation from leaders emanates from different angles. For instance, Ahmad, Ather & Hussain (2014) argue that teachers perform vital role in motivating learners and is made up of two beliefs; firstly, in their own teaching ability and secondly on their belief in the students' learning ability. As a principal, the ability to believe in their effectiveness to lead others should be reflected in their personal efforts to establish a rousing environment for all the followers.
Transformational leadership theory which focuses on the leader's behaviours, where change in the followers is observed and interests of the group are taken care of informed this study (Warrilow, 2012). The concept of transformational leadership is a reflection of Bass seminal works where transformational leadership contributed quite a number of benefits to the follower and the organization in terms of its effectiveness (Bass, 1985). Kolzow (2014), further comment that a transformational leader is a leader engages followers by demonstrating integrity and trust. The leader's role is to transform the followers' sense of purpose, vision, goals and finally model the following into a single team. Bass (1985) puts it clearly that transformational leadership has to be grounded in moral foundations that are usually based on four components: individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspiration and idealized influenced. These aspects are important to the transformational leader who in turn exhibits them through the followers for the purpose of bringing about desired outcomes (Bass &Riggio, 2006). Based upon this theory, this study seeks to determine the influence of principals' intellectual stimulation on student performance at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education. The main hypothesis was intellectual stimulation dimension has no significant relationship with students' mean scores at KCSE.

Research Methodology
According to Kothari & Garg (2014), a design arranges data analysis in a conceptualized structure in research. This study adopted correlational method which examines a significant relationship between two or more variables that were obtained through a statistical procedure (Osebgo & Ifeakor, 2011

Questionnaires Return Rate
The researcher sought to establish the rate of return for the questionnaires. The researcher distributed questionnaires to the principals and teachers respectively in the Makueni County.
Microsoft excel sheet and SPSS 21.0 was used to analyse the results. Table 2 shows the questionnaires return rate of the principals and teachers.  (2015) argues that a response rate of 80 percent and above is preferable and high enough from internally conducted surveys whereas external surveys may yield much less or higher depending on the method used. According to Mbithi (2014), this response depicted a good enough response rate reliable for representing the population under study. However, 25 items were not fully included because they had incomplete items thus a reduction of questionnaires.

Demographic information
Demographic characteristics showed that majority of the principals were female with 57.7 percent while their male counterparts were 42.3 percent. Similarly, female teachers were 63.0 percent more that the male teacher 37.0 percent. The results revealed that there was high gender disparity of the principals and teachers. The female principals and teachers results indicate that they had know-how of the leadership practices. Concerning the age of the respondents, the principals who were between 40-49 were the majority. The finding implied that the principals" maturity level of displaying transformational leadership practices was high hence improved academic performance of public secondary schools. On other hand, teachers below 30 years were the majority 44.4 percent with the highest frequency. This portrayed that many young teachers embraced the teaching profession. Academically, both the principals and the teachers had a bachelor degree. This implies that most of the principals and teachers were qualified in displaying leadership skills and decision making. Respondents experience confirmed that teachers who were between 6-15 years were 47.8 percent and the principals were 51.3 percent respectively. This means that principals and teachers with longer experience were more likely to apply transformational leadership skills. Further, majority of the principals about 58.6 percent had worked at their current positions for more than four years while majority of the teachers below 2 years had 39.5 percent indicating the large number of young people joining the teaching profession

K.C.S. E Performance Makueni County
The study also indicated that the mean score for the five years was 5.27 C-. There were 111 schools, 14 of which managed to attain C+ and above qualified to join university over the four years. This implied that quite a good number of students in the 14 schools joined universities.
The performance was attributed to availability of facilities, lab equipment, appropriate resources and textbooks. The principals and MoE officials utilized transformational practices.
23 schools scored C Plain, 55 had C-and 19 schools scored D+. Majority of the schools (55) had a mean grade above C-. This implied that most students performed in K.C.S.E. The subsequent analysis related idealized influence on academic performance.
The study also indicated that the mean score for the five years was 5.27 C-. There were 111 schools, 14 of which managed to attain C+ and above qualified to join university over the four years. This implied that quite a good number of students in the 14 schools joined universities. The performance was attributed to availability of facilities, lab equipment, appropriate resources and textbooks. The principals and MoE officials utilized transformational practices. 23 schools scored C Plain, 55 had C-and 19 schools scored D+. Majority of the schools (55) had a mean grade above C-. This implied that most students performed in K.C.S.E.
The subsequent analysis related idealized influence on academic performance.

Intellectual stimulation and academic performance
The researcher sought to find out principals" use of intellectual stimulation dimension toward students KCSE performance. Intellectual stimulation (III) has characteristics that are helpful and can be emulated by teachers and students hence increased school performance.     Therefore, intellectual stimulation practice appeared to be emphasized by both the principals and teachers in order to enhance student academic performance in Makueni county. Based on the study findings emphasizing the importance of having a collective sense of mission at 75.7 percent and making decisions in the interest of the school were used by the principals to increase performance at 50.2 percent in 2013-2017 KCSE performance. Report from the MoE officials who were mostly degree holders indicated that their principals applied intellectual stimulation through supporting creativity and innovations in schools through discussions, asking questions and assisting teachers. The MoE also reported that since the principals assumed office achievement has been realized in the sense that they encouraged, rewarded, and supported teachers training.

Hypothesis testing
H03: There is no significant relationship between principals' intellectual stimulation component and students' mean score at Kenya certificate of Secondary Education Makueni county.
Correlation analysis using Pearson's product moment technique was done to determine the relationship between the indicators of principals' intellectual stimulation component and students' mean score at Kenya certificate of Secondary Education. The null hypothesis is there is no significant relationship between principals' intellectual stimulation component and students' mean score at Kenya certificate of Secondary Education at an alpha value 0.05 level of significance.
Pearson correlation was used to test the relationship between principals' intellectual stimulation e and student academic performance at an alpha value 0.05 level of significance. The correlation results in Table 4 indicate a negative and strong significant coefficient between the indicators of principal's intellectual stimulation and students means score at K.C.S.E. The  (Mbithi, 2014).
Report from the MoE officials who were mostly degree holders indicated that their principals applied intellectual stimulation through supporting creativity and innovations in schools through discussions, asking questions and assisting teachers. The MoE also reported that since the principals assumed office achievement has been realized in the sense that they encouraged, rewarded, and supported teachers training.

6.Recommendations
From the findings of the study on principals intellectual stimulation and student performance at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education in Makueni County, Kenya we conclude that there was a statistically significant difference between groups as determined by one-way ANOVA significant difference between groups as determined by one-way ANOVA (F (63,665) =34.100, p=.000), (F(63,665)=31.871, p=.000) for Has self-managing and self-leading skills and Has capacity to solve problems respectively. The most significant difference registered was for emphasizing the importance of having a collective sense of mission, having a strong sense of purpose and value ideas of the followers respectively.
Principals should attend academic training agencies to get the quality transformational leadership skills especially on intellectual stimulation. KEMI should embrace on more of intellectual stimulation attribute whereby their aim to emphasize the importance of having a collective sense of mission, having a strong sense of purpose and value ideas of the followers.
TSC should sponsor trainings on the teachers especially the principals on the skills outside academic phenomenon required for excellence running of school. Teacher training institutions are important avenues for equipping the teachers with such knowledge and skills important for learning not only to the teacher but also to students. the ministry of education to ensure that all the potential talents are tapped efficiently and the specific need of schools are addressed specifically to ensure that academic performance is achieved in the educational institutions.
MoE can get teacher trainers from Kenya Institute of management, universities and colleges to be encouraged to offer transformational leadership skills to the teachers. Further, policies on quality leadership should be laid down giving a good foundation for the teachers" service commission to promote teachers who have exhibited such qualities.