The increasing population diversity in the United States and in public schools
signifies a need for principals to promote diversity awareness as mandated by principal
standards. A means to quantify and measure the principals’ diversity intentions
empirically is required. This study researched the possibility that the Theory of Planned
Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) could provide a theoretical basis for an operation
measurement model. The instrument for the study was an electronic survey administered
via e-mail to a random sample of 151 principals. This instrument incorporated the
Professional Beliefs About Diversity Scale (Pohan & Aguilar, 2001) with the
operationalized General Principal’s Diversity Model and the Professional Diversity
Intentions sub-models. Three research questions guided the study: 1) Can a theory of
planned behavior approach be used to assess school principals’ professional intentions to
promote diversity awareness? 2) What are the intentions of Texas principals to promote
diversity awareness in general and among the five diversity dimensions of disabilities, gender, language, racial/ethnic, and social class in their campus community? and 3) Do
these intentions differ among five demographic characteristics of race/ethnicity, gender,
age, degree, and campus type?
Findings of the study were:
1. The results of this study provided the scientific validation that the TPB
approach can be used to assess public school principals’ professional
intentions to promote diversity awareness.
2. At present, Texas principals’ intentions are only slightly more positive than
the neutral midpoint, a 3.38 average score out of a possible 5.00 regarding
intention to promote diversity awareness. Frequency analysis of the submodels
indicated positive intentions for Gender (58 cases or 38.41
percent); Race/Ethnicity (78 cases or 51.66 percent); Social Class (79 cases
or 52.32 percent); and Disabilities and Language each had 89 cases (58.95
percent).
3. Principals’ intent to implement diversity decreases with age and higher
academic degree held.
4. Hispanic principals are more likely than African American or White
principals to promote diversity awareness.
This study concluded that a Theory of Planned Behavior approach as
operationalized in this study may be used to assess school principals’ professional
intentions to promote diversity beyond the level recommended by their district.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1097 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Landeck, Edith Suzanne |
| Contributors | Larke, Patricia J. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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