title: The Secondary School Principal's Role in Professional Negotiations as Perceived by Representatives of Utah's Educational Enterprise
Creators: name: Lefevor, Paul H.
Publisher: name: Utah State University
Year: 1970

description: The objective of this study was to examine the extent to which congruent role expectations on 50 selected variables were held for the secondary school principal about his role in professional administration and in collective negotiations by representatives of Utah's educational enterprise. The selected variables describe certain possible functions performed by the principal and were subgrouped into nine topic headings that were tested by use of the null hypothesis method. The nine topic variables were: (A) Instruction and Curriculum Development, (B) Personnel Staffing and Placement , (C) Pupil Arrangement and Control, (D) Public Relations, (E) School Building Management and Finance, (F) The Negotiations Process, (G) Grievance Procedure, (H) Related Impasse Action, and (I) Association Membership.
The respondents in this study included all secondary school principals , presidents of local boards of education, presidents of local teachers' associations, superintendents of local school districts, and a stratified random sample of secondary school teachers from each of Utah's forty school districts. The respondents responded to an orginal instrument, "The Principal's Role Expectation Scale, " based on a weighted 5-point Likert scale used to determine role congruency.
The statistical instruments used to determine the per cent and amount of agreement between and among the responding groups on the 50 selected variables included an analysis of variance technique, the F Test, Duncan's New Multiple Range Test and Leik's Measure of Ordinal Consensus . The statistics provided descriptive data about the principal's expected role performance on the nine null hypothesis as well as each of the 50 selected variables.
Findings and Conclusions
1. Each hypothesis produced a significant statistical difference among the responses of the responding groups as they perceived the role of the secondary school principal in professional administration and collective negotiations. Therefore, each hypothesis was rejected.
2. Although there was a significant difference among the responding groups pertaining to the secondary school principal's perceived professional administration roles, there was a high per cent of consensus within the responding groups about these roles. It was also apparent that there was a higher per·centof consensus within the responding groups about the principal 's professional administration roles than there was about his negotiation roles.
3. There was no statistically significant difference among the responding rural and urban segments of Utah's educational enterprise about the secondary school principal's professional administration and negotiation roles.
4. There was a high per. cent of consensus within most groups pertaining to the secondary school principal's negotiation roles. However, the consensus scores and mean value responses indicated several areas of divergent points of view both within and between the responding groups.
5. Areas of incongruity between the related principal's professional administration roles and his collective negotiation roles may be presumed to indicate paradox and they are reported in the conclusions beyond the statistical analysis.
It may be concluded from this study that there was a high per cent of consensus within the responding groups about the secondary school principal's professional management roles and that his role in collective negotiations is still uncertain. The principal's professional administrative role appears subject to change and that the responding groups may have a great amount of influence on the direction of his future role expectations unless he himself becomes more active as a participant in the negotiations process.