| Summary |
The purpose of this dissertation was to develop and test a new model of educational leadership in secondary schools. The trifactor model measured leadership, follower maturity, and the severity of an event that was stressing the organization. The model's basis was the interaction of these three factors. That interaction was visually presented in the model's diagram. The leadership measure was based on a leadership profile consisting of scores for authoritarianism, management, and leadership. The measure of authoritarianism reflected the leader's decision making style. The basis of the management score was the leader's initiation of structure (task) and consideration behaviors. The leadership score was based on operationalized transformational behaviors. This combination of leadership measures established an overall leadership score. The two remaining operationalized factors provided quantitative measures as well. Follower maturity, a measure of job maturity, was measured by the Psychological Maturity Instrument (Blank, Weitzel, Blau, & Green, 1988). The event severity reflected the perceived challenge presented to the organization and was measured by a new instrument. The three scores, once entered into the diagram, established a quantified measure of organizational disharmony. This measure of disharmony was correlated with school-wide student achievement. The research was field research used to test a pattern model created inductively and based on the educational leadership literature. This naturalistic inquiry approach conformed to the emerging paradigm. Two null hypotheses were stated. First, there is no correlation among the instruments developed to measure the leadership component of the trifactor model and previously validated instruments. Second, there would be no correlation between school performance and the level of organizational harmony as measured by the model. Both null hypotheses were rejected. The research suggested the existence of a relationship among leader, follower, and event. This relationship was operationalized and measured on a quantified scale. This study was preliminary and more testing is needed. |
