EMPOWERMENT IN THE PLANNING OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS FROM THE ASPECTS OF SERVICE QUALITY DIMENSIONS

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate the level of service quality of the school principals’ empowerment in the planning of science and mathematics education in finance, strategy, and emphasising the importance of science and mathematics. Also whether there is a difference in the service quality between science-based and non-science-based school principals. The SERVPERF Service Quality Model by Cronin and Taylor was used. It involves the five aspects of service quality dimensions: tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The participants were 705 science and mathematics teachers from 80 secondary schools. The schools were selected using stratified random sampling. The research instrument used was the questionnaire with the component of each section having the reliability indexes of Alpha Cronbach of 0.84 to 0.92. The findings of the study indicated that the level of service quality of the school principals’ empowerment in the planning of science and mathematics education as a whole was not at excellent level. As for the service quality by dimensions, the descending order of all the five dimensions are responsiveness, assurance, empathy, reliability, and tangible. The study also indicated that the index quality of service management of science and mathematics education of the science-based principals was higher and differed significantly at significant level of 0.05 from the non-science-based principals. Several implications are discussed in this article.