Transformational Leadership and Implementation of Digital Literacy Programme in Kenya

Abstract

Over the last century there have been several waves of massive investment on implementation of technology projects to improve education, but none has had significant lasting impact on education due to implementation challenges. The goal of leadership in project implementation is to transform and lead the project to success. Transformative leadership utilize necessary techniques to motivate team members in a project and create a psychologically safe environment that encourages better performances during project implementation. The government of Kenya, as per its vision 2030 blue print, developed a Digital Literacy Programme through Ministry of education which was meant to integrate information communication and technology in teaching and learning in all primary schools across the country. This study was to establish whether transformational leadership had significant influence on implementation of the project. The general objective of the study was to analyze transformational leadership on the implementation of the Digital Literacy Programme in Kenya. The specific objectives were to examine the idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, and the moderating of the legal framework on the implementation of the Programme. The research design adopted both quantitative and qualitative descriptive analysis as well as positivism research philosophy. The target population of the study was 300 project managers who implemented the Digital Literacy Programme in Kenya. The study used simple random sampling technique to sample a population of 171 participants who were the respondents in the research. Data was collected by use of online questionnaire and via email to the respondents. Quantitative data collected was analysed by the use of descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations. In addition, the study conducted a multiple regression analysis to establish the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. Qualitative data was analysed through content analysis. From the findings, there was a positive significance influence between transformational leadership and implementation of the project. Idealized influence, inspiration motivation, intellectual stimulation, individual consideration and legal framework as a moderator were established to have significant influence on implementation of the programme. The study established that intellectual stimulation has the highest influence with t-value of 6.956, followed by idealised influence with t-value of 6.529 and individual consideration has the least influence with t-value of 4.468. In conclusion the study established that there was positive influence of transformational leadership on implementation of Digital Literacy Programme in Kenya by 75.7% variation. The study recommends formulation of policies to guide implementation of government multi-agency projects. The study identified political elites as key stakeholders however their involvement in the project should be through a guided framework to avoid interference which could lead to project failure. The study suggested further studies on project planning, project implementation process, projects being implemented by private sectors and of stakeholder involvements on projects implementation to help compare and generalised the findings.