The influences of school variables on the principal's leadeship style in elementary schools in an urban setting
Creators: name: Cooper, Gwendolyn Jackson
Publisher: name: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Year: 2011

description: Federal and state mandates to produce higher levels of student performance are challenging for school principals. Principals’ overall responsibility is to facilitate teaching and learning designed to enhance student achievement. More specifically, it is the responsibility of the principal to create an environment conductive to learning. Principals’ leadership behaviors have long been the focus of education research because policy makers expect principals to provide the foundation for organizational effectiveness. Recent studies of principals’ leadership revealed that the shaping of a school's success is dependent on the principal's leadership and the influence of major school characteristics: (a) students’ socioeconomic status (SES), (b) racial composition, and (c) academic achievement. Transformational leadership in education is a paradigm that focuses on providing schools with (a) idealized influence, (b) inspirational motivation, (c) stimulation, and (d) individualized consideration. In this study, 101 elementary school teachers rated the leadership behaviors of elementary school principals from an urban school district in central North Carolina. The major independent variables were the students’ SES, racial composition, and academic achievement. Principal and teacher demographics were also independent variables. The dependent variables were overall transformational leadership behavior of the principal, and the four transformational leadership subvariables (specifically, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration). These behaviors were measured by a modified Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Data from the leadership questionnaire were analyzed using the F-test, a statistical model used to compute and test the mean scores between factors. Significant ANOVA results were followed up with a post-hoc analysis using the Scheffe post-hoc test in order to determine specifically where the differences exist. Two-way analysis of variance tests were conducted to explore effects between dependent and independent variables. Findings revealed that principals were rated as having an overall positive leadership style that reflected transformational leadership. Principals in schools with low SES exhibited less positive transformational leadership behaviors compared to principals in schools with high SES. Teacher's age and years of experience did not influence how teachers rated the principal leadership style. Principal's age and years experience did not influence how teachers rated their leadership behavior. The leadership traits of individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, and inspirational motivation were influenced by the schools’ SES. Idealized influence was not influenced by the school's SES. Findings indicated that schools with high SES had a significant correlation with the transformational leadership behaviors of individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, and inspirational motivation. However, this study did have some weaknesses that may have skewed the results. There was a low response rate and an uneven distribution between the different levels of independent variables. For example, the data revealed 20.8% of the schools were low SES, 24.8% were moderate SES, and 54.5% were high SES. Ten percent of the schools were considered to be high achieving, 46.5% were moderate achieving schools, and 41.6% were low achieving schools, and finally 8.9% of the schools had a low percentage of minority students, 37.6% had a moderate percentage of minority students, and 53.5% had a high percentage of minority students. The reader should consider these weaknesses when considering the validity of this study.