Leadership styles of principals at one A.C.T. secondary school 1961-1981

Abstract

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.

Date of Award	1982
Original language	English