Date of Award

6-1-2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

Morgridge College of Education

First Advisor

Susan Korach, Ed.D.

Second Advisor

Kent Seidel

Third Advisor

Anthony Davis

Fourth Advisor

Daniel Connolly

Keywords

Change, Cohort, Education, Generation, Leadership, School

Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive quantitative study was to investigate possible differences in school leadership within a change process, as perceived by teachers. Grouped by generation, this study investigated principals’ perceptions of change order and that of their teachers, as well as how their teachers perceived their principal’s leadership capacity when leading 1st and 2nd order change. This was done by analyzing data from Mid-continent for Education and Learning’s Balanced Leadership Profile®. McREL surveyed principals about the order of school change initiatives and their capacity to lead change. McREL also surveyed teachers about the 1st and 2nd order change leadership of their principals according to 21 leadership responsibilities.

he first part of this study first looked at the differences between what principals estimated the order of change to be for their school improvement initiatives and what the teachers personally thought the order of the change was for themselves. The second part of this study looked at the perceptions teachers had of their principals’ leadership when their principals were leading 1st or 2nd order change for principals overall and for five generational cohorts of principals.

Using t-tests for significant differences, results were summarized into five major findings: 1. a significant gap seems to exist between how principals judged the order of change they were leading and how teachers perceived the same change; 2. the top and bottom five ranked leadership responsibilities were similar for all generational groups; 3. principals tended to self-rate their leadership capacity higher than average compared to their teachers’ ratings, especially under 2nd order change conditions; 4. teachers seemed to rate the leadership capacity of Gen-X principals lower than average under 1st order change conditions. Conversely, teachers seemed to rate the leadership capacity of their Gen-X principals higher than average under 2nd order change conditions; and 5. teachers seemed to rate the leadership capacity of Generation Jones principals higher than average under 1st order, and lower than average under 2nd order, change conditions.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Matthew Scott Kuhn

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

261 p.

Discipline

Educational leadership, Demography, Sociology

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