Leadership styles of secondary school principals as perceived by secondary school teachers

The purpose of this research was to examine secondary school teachers' perceptions of the leadership styles of their principals. The study explored perceptions of leadership styles in relation to selected demographic variables of the teachers (age, gender, ethnicity, level of education, teaching discipline, and years of teaching experience). It also examined differences among the responding teachers' perceptions of their principals' overall effectiveness as managers or leaders using the Leadership Orientations (Other) survey based on the four frames identified by Bolman and Deal. Secondary teachers employed by The School District of Palm Beach County were surveyed during the spring term of 2005. Of the 975 surveys that were distributed, 349 respondents returned completed surveys, a return rate of 35.8 percent. Descriptive statistics revealed two prevalent leadership orientation frames of principals as perceived by their teachers. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and post hoc analysis were used to examine differences in the secondary school teachers' perceptions of their principals' leadership orientation frames considering teacher variables of age, gender, ethnicity, educational level, teaching discipline, and years of experience. A t-test was used to identify significant differences in the secondary school teachers' perceptions of their principals' overall effectiveness as managers or as leaders. The human resource frame and political frame were identified as the prevalent orientation frames. This finding is partially congruent with results reported by several other authors (Davis, 1996; Durocher, 1995; Eckley, 1997; Suzuki, 1994) who found the human resource frame to be prevalent in education settings. There were no significant differences among the teachers considering age, gender, and teaching discipline regarding the leadership orientation frames of their principals, however there were significant differences considering ethnicity, educational level, and years of experience. The teachers' ratings of their principals' overall effectiveness as managers was significantly higher than their ratings of the principals' overall effectiveness as leaders, t (348) = 2.24, < .05. Further study is warranted to explore ways that principals develop as effective in both their leadership and management.