What Are the Different Types of Principals Across the United States? A Latent Class Analysis of Principal Perception of Leadership

Abstract

Purpose: Effective styles of principal leadership can help address multiple issues in struggling schools, such as low student achievement and high rates of teacher attrition. Although the literature has nominated certain “idealized” leadership styles as being more or less effective, such as transformational, instructional, and shared instructional leadership, we have little evidence about how principals may or may not choose to practice these styles across U.S. schools. Research Design: Latent class analysis was used to identify different types of principals across the United States. We analyzed the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey as it presents a unique opportunity to study the different types of U.S. principals since it contains leadership measures not found in other national surveys. A final sample of 7,650 public schools and principals was included in the analysis. Findings: Instead of idealized leadership styles signifying variations in practice, the differences between types of principals were defined by the degree of principal and teacher leadership. Further, the school and principal context, such as school size, urbanicity, accountability performance, and principal background, predicted the three significantly different principal types: controlling, frequent principal leadership; balkanizing, high degree of leadership shared with teachers; or integrating, frequent principal leadership as well as a high degree of leadership shared with teachers. Conclusions: These types suggest that principals simultaneously practice leadership behaviors associated with multiple leadership styles in accordance with their background and school context. These findings provide support for the use of more complex models to assess school leader effectiveness.

Making sense while steering through the fog: Principals’ metaphors within a national reform implementation

“…Reform implementation at the school level suggests that principals continuously strive to balance pressures that exist inside and outside the school. Thus, principals' perception of their role is significant in determining how and to what extent a reform is implemented in a specific school (Urick & Bowers, 2014). While adjusting reform demands to suit their particular needs, school principals respond to the dynamic interactions between internal goals and external demands through a sense-making process (Saltrick, 2010), which re-centers school principals' role as local actors (Spillane & Kenney, 2012) and as mediating agents who develop adaptive strategies (BridwellMitchell, 2015;Pesonen et al, 2015).…”

Karakteristike Savremenih Modela Liderstva U Obrazovanju

“…Transformacioni lideri su orijentisani na građenje profesionalnih zajednica kroz isticanje potreba nastavnika i kroz povezivanje ciljeva škole sa ličnim ciljevima nastavnika (Urick & Bowers, 2014). Takav stil liderstva povezuje rad sa željama i težnjama uključenih, čija osnovna motivacija postaje autonomna i intrinzična 98 | Stefan R. Ninković (Vican et al, 2014).…”

“…Uporedni prikaz pokazuje da između različitih modela liderstva postoji značajan stepen preklapanja i da lideri koji rade u školama mogu da kombinuju različite stilove vođenja. Studije realizovane u SAD (Urick & Bowers, 2014) pokazuju da direktori škola obično ispoljavaju nekoliko stilova liderstva u obavljanju svoje uloge. Istraživači ukazuju na činjenicu da unapređenje nastavnih procesa pretpostavlja razvijanje ukupnog organizacionog kapaciteta škole.…”

“…U budućim istraživanjima bilo bi korisno empirijski ispitati u kojoj meri su pomenuti modeli zastupljeni u obrazovnim institucijama u Srbiji, kao što je to već urađeno u drugim zemljama (Urick & Bowers, 2014). Na taj bi se način, na primer, došlo do uvida da li uspešni direktori škola u Srbiji paralelno ispoljavaju visok nivo transformacionog i pedagoškog liderstva.…”

Principal self-efficacy in the implementation of a standards based teacher evaluation reform.

“…Further, the authors found teaching quality was higher in schools with integrated leadership. Urick and Bowers (2014) used Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to test the results of Marks and Printy (2003) by using a national sample of 7,650 principals. Results confirm those of Marks and Printy (2003) providing support to the idea that leadership types are multidimensional.…”