Despite the fact that there is an increasing call
from the community for principals to provide leadership in
their schools, little work has been conducted in Australia
into the question of educational leadership.
This study attempts to describe the leadership
styles of principals at one A.C. T. secondary school over
the period 1961 to 1981.
Immegart (1973), when considering possible
alternative approaches to the study of leadership
suggested that the genealogical approach, that is the study
of the succession of leaders in one situation, may be a
viable alternative.
Taking up this suggestion the present study
attempts to trial the genealogical approach in order to
contribute to a body of knowledge on the leadership styles
of principals in schools in the A.C.T.
A shortened form of Likert's Management Systems
Questionnaire was used to describe the leadership style of
the principals. A brief survey of the staff was conducted
in order to build up a profile of the staff with whom each
principal worked.
A number of hypotheses were tested. It was
found that there had been a change in the leadership styles
of the principals over the twenty year period, but this
change was not uniform. Subscales of leadership,
communication, decision making, goals and control were
found to follow the same pattern as the overall result,
with the exception of the subscale communication which had
a more restricted range.
The number of years a teacher taught at the
school, previous teaching experience, qualifications and
position on the staff were not found to affect teachers'
perceptions of the leadership style of the principal.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219387 |
| Date | January 1982 |
| Creators | Thomas, S. G., n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright S. G. Thomas |
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