An evaluation of the effectiveness of school principal leader behaviour
Date
1974
Authors
Kreiser, Jacob Ernest
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Abstract
This research, conducted in major urban centres of the four western provinces, tested a theoretical proposal relating to the professionalization of teachers involving leader behaviours of school principals. The proposed theory has its base in the works of Barnard (1938), Becker (1953), Halpin (1955), Stogdill (1959), Thompson (1961), Gross and Herriott (1963) and Brown (1966). It was proposed that the more professionalization that occurs on the part of teachers, the more Tolerance of Freedom, Consideration, and Tolerance of Uncertainty would be expect d of school principal leader behaviour. At the same time principals would need to emphasize productive output, to predict outcome more accurately, and to initiate structure to greater extent to accomplish the goals of the school. Therefore, it was further proposed that principals who have more training would tend to behave in this manner to a greater extent than would lesser trained principals.
The investigation was designed to obtain descriptions of school principal leader behaviour as perceived by teachers. The critical variables formally employ din the hypotheses were those of teacher and principal training and education on the one hand, and six of Stogdill's (1959) twelve leader behaviour dimensions on the other, using the LBDQ-1 questionnaire. The dimensions were as follows: Tolerance of Freedom, Consideration, an Tolerance of Uncertainty relating to idiographic or personnel aspects; Production Emphasis and Initiating Structure relating to nomothetic or system aspects; and Predictive Accuracy relating to the transactional aspect. An hypothesis was assumed to be supported if mean differences were significant at the .05 level. All the twelve leader behavior dimensions were posited for purposes of exploring question involving input variables, namely, school size, level of instruction ; teacher age, sex, experience , training and education; and principal age, experience, training and education.
The LBDQ-12 was administered to teachers in February 1973 with the co-operation and assistance of District Superintendents and/or their designates. Three hundred and five teachers in ten school districts participated in this research on the basis of random selection and sampling.
The Single-Classification Analysis of Variance and the Separate Variance t Test Model, two tailed, statistical techniques were used for data analysis.
Findings in whole or in part sustained the hypotheses in this research relating to degree-holding teachers on the leader behaviour dimensions of Tolerance of Freedom, Consideration, and Tolerance of Uncertainty. Findings also sustained the hypotheses relating to the leader behaviours of the principal with six or more years of training on the dimensions of Production Emphasis, Predictive Accuracy, and Initiating Structure. Leader behaviours of this principal was also accorded high mean scores on the dimensions of Tolerance of Freedom and Consideration.
Empirical evidence obtained in this investigation suggests that school principal leader behaviour in major urban centres in the four western provinces tends to respond to teachers' need for professional independence above all else.