The findings of this study serve as an exploratory case-study examining the conditions of professional learning for in-service principals in one north Texas suburban district with changing student demographics. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of a variety of data collected sought to reveal how professional development of principals increased a principal's contingent leadership skills to positively affect student achievement through school improvement efforts. Perceptions were examined from the sample of seven executive directors at the district level; six campus principals (two elementary, two middle, and two high school); and eight teachers selected from among four of the six campuses whose principal participated in a semi-structured interview. Additionally, responses from a principal survey were examined. Findings were organized around three themes that surfaced from the deductive and inductive analysis of data collected in response to the three research questions. The themes were: instructional leadership and other principal responsibilities, principal professional development and components of professional learning, and measuring the effectiveness of principal professional learning. Findings revealed that there are many offerings of professional development opportunities available to principals in Learning ISD. The components essential in effective principal professional learning opportunities in the studied district consisted of embedding social capital, professional capital, and decisional capital to develop contingency leadership skills. Measuring the effectiveness of principal professional learning remains an area of growth for the district studied as well as the adherence to a meaningful principal evaluation system that can properly quantify and qualify a campus administrator's effect on school improvement and student learning.

Emergency medical teams operate under unusual circumstances. They assemble for a singular, temporary purpose, potentially change in size and composition, and their performance can influence whether a patient lives or dies. Although leadership is a critical component to team success, it is rarely investigated in the context of emergency medical teams. This study sought to examine the relationship between directive leadership behaviors and team performance outcomes. It was hypothesized that directive leadership would be particularly effective for emergency medical teams. In addition, a contingency model was proposed. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the effectiveness of directive leadership is contingent upon the complexity of the situation and the experience level of the team such that directive leadership is more effective when teams are inexperienced and the situation is complex. Neonatal resuscitation teams served as the emergency medical teams in this study. The proposed relationships were tested using observations from high-fidelity, neonatal resuscitation team training simulations. Hypotheses were not supported. Limitations and suggestions for future research for the development of leadership training curriculum are discussed.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:26:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Arnaldo Turuo Ono.pdf: 1092381 bytes, checksum: 63271619bb6e0edcf7ecaae67f95f47b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-03-14 / House s (1971) Path-Goal Theory of Leadership, in spite of the fact that has being largely diffused mainly in USA; in Brazil, however, there is no organizational leadership researches concerning this theory. From that, a scientific investigation with the objective of testing subjacent hypotheses of House s theory was developed. Firstly, a quantitative research was done, with 226 workers, from a Brazilian auto parts company, the majority acting directly at the assembly line. A self-answered questionnaire was applied, in order to apprehend all variables of House s model. Correlation and hierarchical regression analysis were utilized to treat the data. The results demonstrated that none of the relations showed moderation effects and, only strait relations were observed, for instance, the performance variable and directive leader behavior and achievement oriented leader behavior. Subsequently, in order to deeply understand the gotten results, a qualitative research was developed. The data were obtained through deep interviews with 7 individuals of the same company at different hierarchical levels. Those data were analyzed under the light of thematic categorical content analysis technique. A content analysis was utilized to assess the qualitative data analysis. Cultural traits were identified as for instance, paternalism, spectator posture. From the analysis result of the two researches, could conclude that the Brazilian cultural traits would influence the leadership processes, in a way that leaders wouldn t show contingencial characteristics, differently of House s (1971) affirmation. Inferring, therefore, new researches must be done concerning the Brazilian cultural traits in order to validate Houses s theory in the Brazilian organizations context. / A teoria do caminho-meta de House (1971), embora tenha sido bastante difundida principalmente nos EUA, no Brasil, não se encontrou pesquisas em liderança organizacional considerando a teoria. Dessa forma, desenvolveu-se uma investigação científica com a finalidade de testar as hipóteses subjacentes à teoria de House. Inicialmente, foi realizada uma pesquisa quantitativa, com uma amostra de 226 respondentes trabalhadores de uma empresa brasileira do setor de autopeças, a maioria atuando diretamente na linha de produção. Foi aplicado um questionário autopreenchível, para apreender todas as variáveis do modelo de House. Análises de correlação e regressão hierárquica foram utilizadas para tratar os dados. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram que nenhuma relação apresentou efeitos de moderação e, somente, relações diretas foram identificadas, como por exemplo, a variável desempenho e o comportamento diretivo do líder e o comportamento orientado para o resultado do líder. Posteriormente, visando compreender mais profundamente os resultados obtidos, desenvolveu-se uma pesquisa qualitativa. Os dados foram obtidos por meio de entrevistas em profundidade com 7 sujeitos pertencentes à mesma empresa em diferentes posições hierárquicas. Esses dados foram analisados à luz da técnica de análise de conteúdo do tipo categórica temática. Para a análise dos dados qualitativos utilizou-se a técnica de análise de conteúdo. Foram identificados traços culturais, como por exemplo, o paternalismo e a postura de espectador. A partir da análise dos resultados das duas pesquisas, pode-se concluir que os traços culturais brasileiros poderiam influenciar os processos de liderança, fazendo com que os líderes não apresentem características contingenciais, diferentemente do que afirma House (1971), infere-se, portanto, que novas pesquisas devam ser realizadas considerando os traços culturais brasileiros visando validar a teoria de House para o contexto das organizações brasileiras.