Speaker
Description
Low teacher performance in rural Nigerian secondary schools remains a major barrier to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), which emphasizes inclusive and equitable quality education. This study investigates how transformational leadership and organizational culture shape teacher performance, with organizational trust and teacher engagement as mediating mechanisms. Drawing on General Systems Theory and Social Exchange Theory, data were collected from 167 public secondary school teachers in Ukwa West, Nigeria, and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Results demonstrate that transformational leadership exerts the strongest influence on teacher performance, both directly and indirectly through trust and engagement. Organizational culture also enhances performance, primarily via trust. These findings position trust and engagement as critical relational processes for strengthening educational outcomes in resource-constrained contexts. The study advances empirical understanding of organizational drivers of teacher effectiveness in Sub-Saharan Africa and offers evidence-based policy recommendations for integrated leadership development, trust-building strategies, and sustained teacher engagement initiatives, contributing to global debates on sustainable, context-responsive education reform.
