Principal and teacher views on cooperative action in the administration of Iowa's secondary schools

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which Iowa secondary school principals and teacher building representatives support a model for cooperative action in the administration of the state's secondary schools. In addition differences in the perceptions of those principals and teachers are examined and the extent to which practices in the schools reflect cooperative practices is determined. The population for the study included all secondary teachers in Iowa identified by their local education associations as the building representative and the principals of the schools where the building representatives were employed. Data were gathered using a survey instrument developed by the researcher. Questions in the instrument were extracted from assumptions about successful schools and key characteristics in six areas of schooling, both of which were originally identified in Ventures in Good Schooling jointly published in 1986 by the National Education Association and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. The two groups were asked to respond on a five-point Likert scale to the desirability of eight assumptions which underlie cooperative action. Summaries by group using mean difference scores (correlated t-test) established the beliefs reported by the two groups. Both groups also responded to 30 practices, which were divided into six areas of schooling, in terms of the desirability and degree of implementation in their schools of each practice. Mean difference scores were computed for each of the six categories and were examined by single-sample (within groups) Jt-tests. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Results disclosed an unexpected and Important level of agreement between the two groups. Using a scale of 1-5, both principals and teachers assigned a value greater than 4.3 to the desirability of cooperative action. Both groups assigned an even higher overall agreement value (4.48) with the underlying assumptions about successful schools. Of the six specific areas investigated, the two most notable were student achievement and behavior— where principals and teachers assigned the highest values of desirability (4.56 and 4.51 respectively)— and the area of supervision, evaluation, and personnel, where principals and teachers expressed high, and remarkably similar, levels of support for cooperative action (4.32 and 4.33 respectively). These results indicate that there exists a remarkable level of agreement between teachers and principals about the desirability of teacher involvement in the cooperative and collaborative management of the school. Further indications are that teachers and principals are poised to accept joint responsibility. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION A substantial amount of educational literature has recently focused on effective schools, improving school climate, and leadership effectiveness. References are made to the relative importance of the principal's position and the responsibility of the principal to make decisions which will influence the lives of students, teachers, other employees, parents, and patrons of the school attendance area. The principalship has been characterized as the most powerful position in the American school by virtue of the degree of visibility evidenced on the school campus and in the attendance area. Regardless of the principal's leadership style or behaviors, the principal is the individual in the school who is most responsible for the school climate and outcomes of productivity and satisfaction of students and staff (Kelly, 1980). At the same time, study groups such as the Carnegie Task Force of 1984 (cited in the National Association of Secondary School Principal's and Burger King Corporation's In Honor of Excellence, 1985) point to the need to change the role of the teacher in the direction of greater responsibility and involvement in institutional decision-making in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Still other research responds to this issue of teacher empowerment by noting that successful leaders (including principals) have a capitalistic view of power. That is, one invests it to increase it, and the more one distributes power among others the more one gets in return. This view of power is complex, however, and does Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.