Do Teachers Wish to Be Agents of Change?

Do Teachers Wish to Be Agents of Change?

Allen Menlo and LeVerne Collet (Eds.)

Spine16.891 mm

Do Teachers Wish to Be Agents of Change?Will Principals Support Them?

Allen Menlo and LeVerne Collet (Eds.)

Associate Editors: Zehava Rosenblatt, John Williamson and Theo Wubbels

S e n s e P u b l i s h e r s

Do Teachers Wish to Be Agents of Change?Will Principals Support Them?Allen Menlo and LeVerne Collet (Eds.)Consortium for Cross-Cultural Research in Education

This study surveyed principals and teachers in ten countries to compare principal and teacher attitudes toward the involvement of teachers in several change and development responsibilities. The participating countries were: Australia, Canada, China, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, and United States. Each country administered mirror versions of a questionnaire to samples of at least 50 principals and at least 100 teachers.

The questionnaires listed twenty items describing change responsibilities in which teachers might become involved. For each item, both principals and teachers assigned two teacher involvement ratings: their personal preference, and their estimate of the preference of their role counterpart. These involvement ratings produced four dependent variables: Principal Preferences, Principal Estimates, Teacher Preferences, and Teacher Estimates. For each variable, item responses were clustered to form index sub-scores that measured attitudes toward five education domains: Administration and Coordination, Human Relations, Teacher Support, Classroom Learning, and Evaluation.

Systematic planned comparisons were conducted to determine the most important principal-teacher issues within and between countries, and how issues change across index domains. Typical results indicate low awareness of each other’s aspirations and expectations.

The first and last chapters of this book discuss the potential of teacher leaders to become agents of change within their own schools. Several social-psychological competencies are then described for these teachers in their work.

ISBN 978-94-6209-957-9

DIVS

Bridging the Gap

Do Teachers Wish to Be Agents of Change?

Do Teachers Wish to Be Agents of Change?Will Principals Support Them?

Edited by

Allen Menlo and LeVerne ColletConsortium for Cross-Cultural Research in Education

Associate Editors: Zehava Rosenblatt, John Williamson and Theo Wubbels

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6209-957-9 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6209-958-6 (hardback)ISBN: 978-94-6209-959-3 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers,P.O. Box 21858,3001 AW Rotterdam,The Netherlandshttps://www.sensepublishers.com/

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

The editors dedicate this book to colleagues who passed away before the work was completed. These former colleagues are: Marilyn Menlo from United States,

Milan Marich from United States, Lya Kremer-Hayon from Israel, Pam Poppleton from the United Kingdom, Boris Gershunsky from Russia,

and Wieslaw Wizniewski from Poland. They encouraged and supported project activities over many years and accompanied us on research visits to several of the

countries involved. We think they would be pleased with this book.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ix

List of Figures xiii

Introduction xv

1. What This Study Is about: The Practical and Social-Psychological Conceptualization of the Study 1Allen Menlo

2. Design and Sampling of the Cross-Cultural Study: Principal and Teacher Attitudes Towards Teacher Involvement in Change 11LeVerne S. Collet

3. Results of the Cross-Cultural Study: Comparing Principal and Teacher Attitudes Towards Teacher Involvement across Ten Countries 35LeVerne S. Collet

4. Teacher Involvement in Australia: “Teachers Have Much to Offer” 73John Williamson and Christine Gardner

5. Teacher Involvement in Canada: Sharing Responsibility for Change Leadership in Canadian Schooling 99Noel P. Hurley and Shane M. Hurley

6. Teacher Involvement in Policy Making in Chinese Schools 113Xiaoruo Gai

7. The Hungarian Education System in Transition: Shifting Towards Decentralization 133Nóra Arató and Zsolt Lavicza

8. Teacher Involvement in Decision Making in the Israeli School System 151Zehava Rosenblatt, Hilla Peretz and Lya Kremer-Hayon

9. Teacher Responsibility-Taking for School Change & Professional Development in Japan 169Itaru Inoue

10. Teacher Participation in Policy Making in Dutch Schools 189Theo Wubbels

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

11. Singapore Engagement in Educational Change 205Lim Lee Hean

12. Teacher Involvement in South Africa: Ongoing Change in South African Education 215Johan Booyse and Cassie Swanepoel

13. Teacher Participation in Responsibility-Taking in the United States School System 235Nora Arato, Tsila Evers and Zsolt Lavicza

14. Summary and Conclusions: Implications for School Practice and Research 253LeVerne S. Collet

15. Teacher Leadership: The Significant Role of Teachers in School Change 279Allen Menlo

Appendix 289

ix

LIST OF TABLES

Principal Questionnaire 4Teacher Questionnaire 5Table 2-1. Twenty possible responsibilities of teachers in school change 13Table 2-2. Four questions asked of principals about each responsibility item 14Table 2-3. Two questions asked of teachers about each questionnaire item 19Table 2-4. Index and item means for the preferences and estimates of

principals and teachers in all ten countries combined 21Table 2-5. Observed order and significant differences among primary index

means in each country 24Table 2-6. Reliabilities for principal and teacher indexes using

Cronbach alpha (α) and Guttman split-half (r) procedures 25Table 2-7. Number of valid principal and teacher questionnaires

returned in each country 27Table 2-8. Percentage of female and male principals and teachers

in each country 27Table 2-9. Age group percentages for principals and teachers in

each country 29Table 2-10. Percentage distributions for school enrolment categories

in each country 31Table 3-1. Correlations of demographic variables with grand means for

principal and teacher preferences and estimates 39Table 3-2. Ten-country partial correlations of demographics and index

means for Principal Estimates, Principal Preferences, Teacher Preferences and Teacher Estimates with country means held constant 42

Table 3-3. Grand, index and item means for Principal Estimates, Principal Preferences, Teacher Preferences, and Teacher Estimates for all ten countries combined 44

Table 3-4. TI Valence means and percentage score distributions for countries clustered in homogenous valance groups VG1 to VG 46

Table 3-5. Critical planned comparisons among preference and estimate index means of principals and teachers in all ten countries combined 51

x

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3-6. Comparison 1 (Principal Preferences-Principal Estimates): principal perceptions of the adequacy of teacher aspirations for involvement in change projects conducted by the combined and individual countries 54

Table 3-7. Comparison 2 (Teacher Preferences-Teacher Estimates): teacher perceptions of the adequacy of principal support for their aspirations for involvement in change projects conducted by the combined and individual countries 55

Table 3-8. Comparison 3 (Teacher Preferences-Principal Estimates): the accuracy of principal estimates of teacher preferences for involvement in change projects conducted by the combined and individual countries 58

Table 3-9. Comparison 4 (Principal Preferences-Teacher Estimates): the accuracy of teacher estimates of principal preferences for involvement in change projects conducted by the combined and individual countries 59

Table 3-10. Comparison 5 (Principal Preferences-Teacher Preferences): the congruence or balance of Principal Preferences and Teacher Preferences for teacher involvement in change projects conducted by the combined and individual countries 61

Table 4-1. Participants by gender, age, and years of experience as teacher and principal 77

Table 4-2. Australian and Ten-Country index means with associated percentages of strong and weak scores for principal and teacher preferences and estimates 82

Table 6-1. Percentage distribution of Chinese principals and teachers by age and gender 117

Table 6-2. Percentage distribution of schools by enrolment size in China 117Table 6-3. Critical planned comparisons among preference and estimate

means of principals and teachers in China 121Table 7-1. Relevant socio-economic characteristics of Hungary 136Table 7-2. Age distribution of teachers in Hungary 137Table 8-1. Planned comparisons among Principal Preference, Principal

Estimate, Teacher Preference, and Teacher Estimate means in Israel 163

Table 9-1. Age group and gender percentages for teachers and principals in Japan 172

Table 9-2. Percentage of schools in student enrolment categories in Japan 172

xi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 9-3. Higher and lower Teacher Preferences (aspirations) for responsibility-taking in school change in Japan 175

Table 9-4. Higher and lower Teacher Estimates of Principal Preferences for responsibility-taking in school organization change in Japan 176

Table 9-5. Higher and lower Principal Preferences for teacher involvement in responsibility-taking in school organization change in Japan 177

Table 9-6. Higher and lower Principal Estimates of Teacher Preferences for responsibility-taking in school organization change in Japan 178

Table 9-7. Principal perceptions of the sufficiency of teacher aspiration levels: Principal Preferences versus Principal Estimates in Japan 180

Table 9-8. Teacher perceptions of the sufficiency of principal support levels: Teacher Preferences versus Teacher Estimates in Japan 181

Table 9-9. The accuracy of Principal Estimates of Teacher Preferences (aspirations) in Japan 182

Table 9-10. The accuracy of Teacher Estimates of Principal Preferences (support) in Japan 183

Table 9-11. Congruence and incongruence between Principal Preferences (expressed support of the teacher wishes) and actual Teacher Preferences (involvement wishes) 184

Table 10-1. Age distribution in percentages for teachers and principals in our sample and in the Dutch teacher population. Data for the principal population are not available 195

Table 10-2. Years of work experience of teachers and principals in the Dutch sample 195

Table 11-1. The percent of responses to each index with strong scores (4 or 5) for Singapore vs. all ten countries combined 209

Table 14-1. Percent of Grand Mean, Administration-Coordination, and Classroom Learning responses with non-involved scores of 1 or 2 for Principal Preferences, Principal Estimates, Teacher Preferences and Teacher Estimates in the combined and individual countries 261

Table 15-1. Grand Means of Teacher Preferences and Principal Preferences by country 279

Table 15-2. A Johari Window that might be used with teachers and principals 281

Table 15-3. Categories of behavior characteristic of supportive and defensive climates in small groups 283

xiii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1-1. A conceptual model for the chains of influence connecting variables in the study 7

Figure 2-1. The four sets of data collected in each country and the planned comparisons among them 33

Figure 3-1. Design of the cross-cultural analysis: the country, role, and moderator influences on the four teacher involvement variables and the relationships among them 37

Figure 3-2. Mean TI Valence scores for principals and teachers in each country 48

Figure 3-3. Percent of TI Valence scores that were robust involvement and non-involvement in countries within valence groups 49

Figure 3-4. Percentage of responses with non-involvement scores (1 or 2) for Principal Preferences, Principal Estimates, Teacher Preferences, and Teacher Estimates in the ten-country combination and in each individual country. 63

Figure 7-1. Hungarian index means of Teacher Preferences versus Teacher Estimates of Principal Preferences 138

Figure 7-2. Hungarian index means of Principal Preferences versus Principal Estimates of Teacher Preferences 138

Figure 7-3. Hungarian index means of Principal Estimates of Teacher Preferences versus actual Teacher Preferences 139

Figure 7-4. Hungarian index means of Teacher Estimates of Principal Preferences versus actual Principal Preferences 140

Figure 7-5. Hungarian index means of Principal Preferences versus Teacher Preferences 141

Figure 7-6. Hungarian versus Ten-Country index means of Teacher Preferences 142

Figure 7-7. Hungarian versus Ten-Country index means of Teacher Estimates of Principal Preferences 143

Figure 7-8. Hungarian versus Ten-Country index means of Principal Preferences 143

Figure 7-9. Hungarian versus Ten-Country index means of Principal Estimates of Teacher Preferences 144

xiv

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 8-1. Teacher Preferences for participation in decision making in Israel 158

Figure 8-2. Teacher Estimates of Principal Preferences for teacher participation in decision making in Israel 158

Figure 8-3. Principal Preferences for teacher participation in decision making in Israel 159

Figure 8-4. Principal Estimates of teacher preferences for participation in decision making in Israel 160

Figure 10-1. Structure of the Dutch educational system in 2003 190Figure 10-2. Dutch & Ten-CountryTeacher Preferences for participation

in decision making 197Figure 10-3. Dutch & Ten-Country Teacher Estimates of Principal

Preferences for teacher participation in decision making 197Figure 10-4. Dutch & Ten-Country Principal Preferences for teacher

participation in decision making 198Figure 10-5. Dutch & Ten-CountryPrincipal Estimates of Teacher

Preferences for participation in decision making 198Figure 13-1. Index means of Principal Preferences versus Principal

Estimates for the United States and all ten countries combined 241Figure 13-2. Index means for Teacher Preferences versus Teacher

Estimates for the United States and all ten countries combined 242Figure 13-3. Index means for Teacher Preferences versus Principal

Estimates for the United States and all ten countries combined 243Figure 13-4. Index means for Principal Preferences versus Teacher

Estimates for the United States and all ten countries combined 244Figure 13-5. Index means for Principal Preferences versus Teacher

Preferences for the United States and all ten countries combined 245

Figure 15-1. One representation of the Force Field Analysis 282Figure 15-2. How Messages Get Distorted 285

xv

INTRODUCTION

To Our Readers:

The purpose of our Introduction is to quite briefly tell you about the general nature of each chapter of this book, the background of our Consortium for Cross-Cultural Research in Education, the authors of each of our book chapters, and the focus of the present study in this book.

Nature of Each Chapter in this Present Study:

Chapter 1: We describe our perspective on teacher involvement in change within their schools. The specific questions we ask to our principals and teachers are clearly shown within our two questionnaires. The idea of an expanded role of teachers as teacher leaders and as a means toward teacher professional growth and meaningful work life is suggested. All the variables and their interrelationships within the study are presented.

Chapters 2 and 3: These chapters provide a very detailed and thorough explanation of the design, sampling, data analysis and results of the cross-cultural aspects of the ten-country study. The intensive display of comparative information and findings is drawn from the cross-cultural analysis of the principals’ and teachers’ perceptions and attitudes regarding teacher involvement in school change.

Chapters 4-13: Each of these ten chapters is a separate sub-study by each author or set of authors in each country to determine the relationships between principals and teachers perceptions and attitudes toward the involvement of teachers in change in their own secondary schools.

Chapter 14: This chapter is a collective summary of all previous sections of the entire study and presents implications for school practice and further research. It provides an integration, synthesis, and a coherent network of interrelated themes, patterns, conclusions, and suggestions for research-into-practice for schools. This serves as one example of (2012) American Educational Research Association’s president Arnetha Ball’s thesis that “To Know is Not Enough”. But reflecting on the implications for effective policy and practice is most essential.

Chapter 15: This chapter examines a significant role of teacher leaders in school change. A table of the teachers’ wish and principals’ support within the current study is presented. Competencies for teacher leadership are suggested. A brief description of the present nature of teacher-led and teacher-autonomy schools is reported.

About the Consortium for Cross-Cultural Research in Education:

The Consortium is a research partnership that has grown from a membership of three countries in 1981 to ten currently. It was co-founded by three professors:

INTRODUCTION

xvi

A. Menlo, of the University of Michigan, USA, P. Poppleton of the University of Sheffield, England, and H. J. Lissmann, of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt, Germany, in the midst of their successful comparative research at their three universities. It was initially known as the Frankfurt-Michigan-Sheffield Cross-Cultural Study Program. A small grant from the University of Michigan made it possible for the three co-founders to participate in face-to-face planning sessions at each other’s university. Professor LeVerne Collet joined the University of Michigan team as data analyst and statistics consultant in 1988.

The planned purpose of the Consortium continues to be the generation of social science knowledge about teaching and schooling and the translation of that knowledge into improved understandings of educational systems and processes as well as action implications for the improvement of education within and across the national settings involved. The Consortium has always been a proponent of the search for deeper and broader meanings of teaching and an advocate for the use of these meanings in creating a work life for teachers that allows the fullest expression of their potential in society.

In carrying out this interest, its work has been supported financially by private and government sources and the universities involved. New team memberships have come about through emergent professional contacts, which have developed partly through meetings held at international conferences, and partly through research travel and the considerable technological developments in communication that have taken place over the past ten years.

Over time, the academic interest of the Consortium has become more clearly defined as teaching in the secondary sector, including the quality of the teaching life and all matters relevant to the continuing professional development of teachers and the roles of providers of teacher education. Within the Consortium there has always been a common study available for member teams who wish to be involved in a demandingly collaborative venture in cross-cultural comparative research within the core area of interest. At the same time, some teams have also conducted studies in line with the Consortium’s core interest, but highlighting their own emphasis, style, and methodology.

The Consortium provides a friendly context for those who wish to pursue comparative studies related to teaching and teacher education. It has already built an international database that is serving to encourage and increase the number of studies in this area by other workers.

A Consortium library containing over eight hundred books, dissertations, journal articles, and conference papers bearing information on the areas of teacher work life and cross-cultural research is located at the University of Michigan team offices. Over the years, teams have not only worked together on the same projects but have arranged and hosted, in their own countries, the data collections of other teams who had initiated solo projects.

The directors of all teams constitute a directorate that, as a loosely knit body, engages in discourse regarding general and specific issues in the conduct and

INTRODUCTION

xvii

management of current projects, the planning of future projects, and the presentation and dissemination of findings. Participative discussion and consensual decision-making are pursued via face-to-face meetings at conferences, team-on-team visits, and electronic and regular mail. The Consortium’s central e-mail address, [email protected], provides a means of reaching the directors of all the teams simultaneously.

The promotion of inclusion and open communication and the development and maintenance of an organizational identity are continuing efforts. The latter is not without difficulty in an organization whose units are separated by international distances which tend to create an abstractness of imagery for its members. Though, as seems to be the case with all living systems, the sharing of superordinate goals and a strong commitment to a collaboratively systematic process have been important contributors toward both a positive experience and a sense of progress. It is quite interesting that the cultural differences between members have functioned more as a gentle source of cross-cultural learning, world-mindedness, mutual appreciation, and challenge, rather than as obstacles to communal efforts. Indeed, we have found that working together in a loosely bounded academic organization can provide a rich, continuing agenda of interpersonal, intergroup, and international insights.

We are always in the midst of interesting and meaningful studies together. At the present moment, we are in the early stages of a significant multi-country study on teacher accountability which was initiated and is being led by Professor Zehava Rosenblatt at University of Haifa ([email protected]).

The Focus of the Presently Completed Study:

The extent to which secondary teachers have an actual opportunity and desire to be responsibly involved in change within their own schools and country.

The authors in this present study are:

Australia: John Williamson; Christine GardnerCanada: Noel Hurley; Shane Hurley China: Xiaoruo GaiHungary: Nóra Arató; Zsolt LaviczaIsrael: Zehava Rosenblatt; Hilla Peretz; Lya Kremer HayonJapan: Itaru InoueNetherlands: Theo WubbelsSingapore: Lim Lee HeanUSA: Nóra Arató; Tsila Evers; Zsolt LaviczaSouth Africa: Johan Booyse; Cassie SwanepoelUSA and Cross-Cultural: LeVerne ColletUSA and Cross-Cultural: Allen Menlo

INTRODUCTION

xviii

A Final Word:

The Consortium for Cross-Cultural Research in Education appreciates the commitment and extensive work of the authors from each country during the development of the book. On behalf of the Consortium, I most sincerely thank them and congratulate them for their important contributions.

Allen Menlo, Director of the Consortium

Questions may be addressed to either of the editors at the email addresses given below:

Professor Emeritus Allen Menlo Professor Emeritus LeVerne Collet [email protected] [email protected]

A. Menlo & L. Collet (Eds.), Do Teachers Wish to Be Agents of Change?, 1–9. © 2015 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

ALLEN MENLO

1. WHAT THIS STUDY IS ABOUT

The Practical and Social-Psychological Conceptualization of the Study

This cross-cultural study explores an alternative perspective on teacher work life in secondary schools in ten different countries. It adds a new dimension of teacher role for teachers who may be interested in accepting and taking responsibilities for the organizational improvement of their school as a knowledgeable and encouraging workplace, and ideally as an eventually recognized setting for teacher learning and professional development. We believe this exploration of school responsibility-taking by teachers within their schools can have a strong, positive influence on both their school’s continuing improvement and their own professional development.

In this present study by our Consortium for Cross-Cultural Research in Education, we wanted to discover the extent to which teachers might wish to be involved in this kind of professional responsibility and the extent to which their principals might be willing to support teachers’ leadership in this activity. We believe our findings have opened new information and knowledge about teachers, principals, and teacher-principal relationships, and potential implications for practices regarding teacher-principal interaction, and further considerations for both school improvement and teacher professional development. Our study should have wide relevance since data were collected in urban-suburban areas of ten countries: Australia, Canada, China, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, and United States.

As a social-psychological study, it builds on the personal and interpersonal perceptions between teachers and principals regarding their views of teacher responsibility-taking for change in their schools. It provides new implications for teacher involvement in school change. Our research is focused more on teacher-principal work life than on the already significant classroom teaching of students. It also includes the opportunity for facilitating teacher development and school improvement in the context of their everyday work life and it hopefully will encourage teachers to become agents of change in their own schools. What has most recently emerged is a newer understanding in recent literature and practice (e.g., Farris-Berg, April 2014; York-Barr, 2004; Barth, 2001; Crouther et al., 2002.), that teachers, as teacher-leaders, can become a major source for constructive school change and teacher growth. This would also free principals for their increased multiplicity and new complexities of tasks (Price, 2012), including their support of teacher-influenced change.

A. MENLO

2

LOOKING BACK

In our Consortium’s earlier (1999-2000) ten country internationally comparative study on educational change (Poppleton & Williamson, 2004), the major finding was that the active involvement of teachers in secondary school change was the most powerful variable for promoting positive work life outcomes for teachers, as well as generating teachers’ receptiveness and positive feelings toward change itself. Furthermore, the study revealed that the most encouraging interpersonal school climate occurred if teachers were involved in the highest level of change activity (initiating, planning, and shared decision making) as opposed to the customary middle level of implementing and supporting change, or at the lowest level of having no role or resisting change. While data variations occurred across countries, the general findings were consistent for all ten countries.

Prior theory, research, and practice have shown that the experience of significant responsibility-taking by members within organizations increases the likelihood of such positive personal and group outcomes as heightened self-esteem, increased skill-mastery, raised power of inter-collegial influence, and a new sense of optimism and willingness to participate in future organization improvements (Rotter, 1966; Katz & Kahn, 1978; Clabough & Rozycki, 1990; Fullan & Hargreave, 1992).

Roland Barth, at the Harvard Principals Center and the International Network of Principals Center has observed that teachers who become leaders in their schools acquire new professional satisfaction, reduction of isolation, a sense of instrumentality, and new learnings which enter into their teaching. At the same time, though, Barth observed that only a quarter of a school’s faculty rises to a high level of participation in school leadership. He speculates “something deep and powerful within school climate seems to work against teacher leadership” (Barth, 2001). Somehow, schools do not appear to be viewed as legitimate rich settings for teacher professional learning and development in school leadership.

It seemed puzzling, then, why the opportunity for schools to stimulate, encourage, and promote advanced competency in their teachers during school change has made such limited use of recently available social science knowledge. Instead, middle levels rather than higher levels of teacher involvement have been the pattern with change efforts in many schools. There appears to be a strong disconnection between credible social science knowledge and the practice and policy of teacher involvement in school change. Recently, though, the concept and practice of teacher leadership have begun to assume new importance in organizational levels of practice. They have become aligned with educational improvement, individual empowerment, school management, and as a key to understanding the ways schools function. They also have acquired a new role for improving schools through organizational development and an expanded hope for educational change (York-Barr & Duke, 2004).


3

LOOKING AHEAD

As a follow-up to our earlier study’s findings, the same ten country teams conducted this present international study. We had become aware of the extent to which principals and teachers themselves can be a major influence on teacher attitude (Guthrie & Reed, 1991; Hoy & Miskel, 1987; Sergiovanni et al., 1987).

Thus, a major intent of this present study was to understand how the perceptions and attitudes of principals and teachers toward teacher involvement appear to influence the extent and kinds of responsibility-taking of teachers within their schools. We wondered how much teachers actually want to contribute to changes in the context (external factors and conditions) of their teaching in addition to the usually ascribed responsibility of classroom learning and student development. Also, to what extent are their principals ready to surrender long-standing major leadership and to become ready to be a resource of support of teacher leadership.

In passing, it is interesting to note that a very recent collection of writings (Chrispeels, 2004) examines the dilemmas that principals and teachers can face in engaging each other in the sharing of leadership in schools, thus raising this issue as an important and challenging problem of educational policy and practice.

To collect the necessary data for the present study, a Principal Questionnaire, and a very similar Teacher Questionnaire with 20 professional school responsibilities were developed with a 5-point Likert-type response scale ranging from “none” to “very much”. For each of the 20 responsibilities in the Principal Questionnaire, principals recorded their views on how much teachers wish and should take this added organizational responsibility. For each of the same 20 responsibilities, teachers disclosed the extent to which they wished to be involved and their opinion on how much their principal thinks they should be involved. This provided us with congruence and incongruence between principals’ and teachers’ views regarding teacher responsibility-taking.

Since the two questionnaires are key to understanding the major purpose of the study and the dynamics of principal and teacher relationships, copies of the final versions of the instruments are presented on the next two pages.

Note that all 20 responsibilities were precisely the same in each questionnaire. What did differ between the two questionnaires were the two leading questions of each questionnaire, which set the stage for the teacher-principal interaction.

The questionnaires were used by all ten country teams with translation from English to the native language and phraseology where necessary. Back-translation procedures were employed and country-specific field-testing was conducted. Also, each team collected responses from at least 50 principals and from at least 100 teachers within a similar type urban-suburban area of each national setting.

A. MENLO

4

PRINCIPAL QUESTIONNAIRE

Please circle the one response that best indicates your answer in both Column A and Column B.

Your Age _____ Your Years as a Teacher _____ Number of Students at Your School ____

Your Gender ___ Gender of your Principal _____ School Size: Small Medium Large


5

TEACHER QUESTIONNAIRE

Please circle the one response that best indicates your answer in both Column A and Column B.

Your Age _____ Your Years as a Teacher _____ Number of Students at Your School ____

Your Gender ___ Gender of your Principal _____ School Size: Small Medium Large

A. MENLO

6

Our cross-cultural results and separate findings within each country (Chapters 4–13) have been developed from intensive and innovative analyses with attention to within-country relationships, and between-country and across-country similarities and differences. Our 20 responsibility items have been examined individually and then as conceptually and statistically determined clusters of Administration, Human Relations, Principal Support, Classroom Learning, and Evaluation.

A Conceptual Model for the Chains of Influence Connecting Variables of the Study

Figure 1-1 portrays the potential interactions between teachers, between principals, and between teachers and principals, and the potential likely outcomes for school improvement and professional development. Arrow A depicts the potential influence of any Teacher characteristic on the relationship between the Teachers’ wish for involvement and the Teachers’ estimate of Principal support. Arrow B depicts the potential influence of any Principal characteristic on the relationship between the Principals’ estimate of the Teachers’ wish and the Principals’ support for Teachers’ responsibility-taking. Arrow C depicts the internal interaction between the Teachers’ own wish for involvement and the Teachers’ estimate of the Principals’ support. Arrow D depicts the internal interaction between the Principals’ estimate of the Teachers’ wish for involvement and the Principals’ expressed support for the Teachers’ wish. Arrow E depicts the relationship between any inter-relationship of Teachers and Principals. Arrow F depicts any formulations of implications, applications or actions for school improvement or professional development.

CONCLUSION

As previously stated, the presentation of the study opens new discoveries and insights that could eventually encourage schools to view themselves as places of influence on their own improvement and the professional development of their teachers. It demonstrates how teachers may wish to be involved and accept leadership for school organizational and structural change and for their own advanced professional learning in the context of their daily workplace.

It also suggests new research on the concept of sustainability of a change over time. (Hargreaves & Fink, 2003) The introduction of a broad front of leadership, within, among and between teachers may hold more sustained power than a singular format of leadership. This may be similar to the concept of teacher responsibility-taking as practiced in the present study and which found its early beginnings in 1988 with Gene I. Maeroff’s book on “The Empowerment of Teachers.” Maeroff’s perspective was that positive school change was most likely to occur in the hands of teachers, themselves, after being given greater power to use their many abilities toward professionality and high performance.


7

Figu

re 1

-1. A

con

cept

ual m

odel

for t

he c

hain

s of i

nflu

ence

con

nect

ing

vari

able

s in

the

stud

y

A. MENLO

8

The same perspective has been strongly asserted in a 2012 article by Susan M. Johnson who also took an organizational view and suggested specific strategies for increasing instructional capacity by encouraging teachers to work as members of teams, creating differentiated roles for expert teachers to assist and lead colleagues, and supporting a system that aligns the interests of teachers with the needs of schools. Another organizational focus on the relationship between teacher empowerment and school organization is provided by Bogler and Somech (2004). They called attention to their discovery that teachers’ perceptions of their levels of empowerment are significantly related to their feelings of commitment to the organization, to the profession, and to their organizational citizenship behavior.

The question, “Can teachers really be successful sources of leadership for other colleague teachers within a teacher leadership system?” has been raised by professor Richard Mihans (2008) at Elon University. In studying this issue, he reports that most teacher-leaders have demonstrated much competency at leading other teachers in their school if they are granted professional autonomy by their administration and provided with experienced mentoring opportunities.

Dimensions of teacher leadership practice are often discussed in educational psychology literature and focus on the importance of interpersonal relationship building and the development of collaboration. Some long-time teachers have been especially interested in and welcoming of this type of teacher leadership competency. Since they have usually experienced many multi-situational issues in their careers as teachers, they seem to have built an open and enthusiastic attitude toward interpersonal development. Their further learning in this area can create a new role in their school or system. Their means of agency has characteristically included comfort with advocacy, enabling of others, innovation, and an attitude of professionalism. They have equally strong interests in both youth and adult development and varied problems in inter-group communication. It is interesting to find these characteristics identified by long-time teacher leaders.

Little empirical research has been conducted on teacher-leader preparation, while many sources of group process training have been available (Crouther et al., 2002; Smylie & Hart, 2000). It seems clear that it would be wise to generate new theory and research in this area.

REFERENCES

Barth, R. B. (2001). Teacher leader. Phi Delta Kappan, 82, 429–433.Bogler, R., & Somech, A. (2004). Influence of teacher empowerment on teachers’ organizational

commitment, professional commitment and organizational citizenship behavior in schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20, 277–289.

Crouther, F., Kaagen, S. S., Ferguson, M., & Hann, L. (2002). Developing teacher leaders: How teacher leadership enhances school success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Clabough, G. K., & Rozycki, E. G. (1990). Understanding schools. New York, NY: Harper and Row.Chrispeels, J. (2004). Learning to lead together: The promise and challenge of sharing leadership.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.


9

Ferris-Berg, K. (2014). A different model for school success: Empower teachers. Phi Delta Kappa, 95, 31–36.

Fullan, M., & Hargreaves, A. (1992). Whats worth fighting for in headship. Buckingham, England: Open University Press.

Guthrie, J. W., & Reed, R. J. (1991). Educational administration and policy: Effective leadership for american education (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2003). Sustaining leadership. Phi Delta Kappan, 84, 693–700.Hoy, W. K., & Miskel, C. G. (1987). Educational administration: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed).

New York, NY: Random House.Johnson, S. M. (2012). Build the capacity of teachers and their schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 94, 62–65.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1978). The social psychology of organizations (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley.Maeroff, G. I. (1988). The empowerment of teachers. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.Mihans, R. (2008). Can teachers lead teachers. Phi Delta Kappan, 89, 762–765.Poppleton, P., & Williamson, J. (Eds.). (2004). New realities of teachers’ work lives: An international

comparative study of the impact of education change. Oxford, England: Symposium Books.Price, H. E. (2012). Principal-teacher interactions: How affective relationships shape principal and

teacher attitudes. Educational Administration Quarterly, 48, 39–85.Rotter, G. B. (1996). Generalized expectations for internal versus external control of reinforcement.

Psychological Monographs, 80, 1–28.Sergiovanni, T. J., Burlingame, M., Coombs, F. S., & Thurston, P. (1987). Educational governance and

administration (2nd ed.). Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Smylie, M. A., & Hart, A. W. (2002). School leadership for teacher learning and change: A human and

social capital development perspective. In J. Murphy & K. S. Louis (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational administration (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership: Findings from two decades of scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74, 255–316.

Allen MenloProfessor EmeritusSchool of EducationUniversity of Michigan

A. Menlo & L. Collet (Eds.), Do Teachers Wish to Be Agents of Change?, 11–34. © 2015 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

LEVERNE S. COLLET

2. DESIGN AND SAMPLING OF THE CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY

Principal and Teacher Attitudes Towards Teacher Involvement in Change

This study surveyed principals and teachers in the secondary schools of ten different countries to determine the relationships between principal and teacher attitudes towards the involvement of teachers in various change and development responsibilities. All of the cross-cultural aspects of the study are presented in Chapters 2 and 3 and the individual-country results are presented in Chapters 4 through 13.

ORGANIZATION OF STUDY PRESENTATION

The customary practice would be for Chapter 2 to deal with methods and procedures and Chapter 3 to present the results and conclusions. However, the legitimacy of this study depends on establishing the quality of the questionnaire responses, and the best evidence for their reliability and validity comes from an analysis of the responses from all ten countries combined. This evidence should be presented in Chapter 2. To complement the rather extensive reliability and validity analysis and help balance chapter size, Chapter 2 will be expanded to include descriptions of the principal and teacher samples in each country. It will conclude with a summary of the implications of these findings for the design of the cross cultural analyses. Chapter 3 will contain the actual design for the cross-cultural analyses, the results of the statistical analyses, and a summary of the research findings derived from these results.

A unique aspect of this study was that the involvement attitudes of both principals and teachers were assessed from two directions: their personal preferences and their estimates of the preferences of persons in the opposite role. The study design emphasizes the reciprocal relationships among these variables.

However, the design must also assess or control the influences of contextual variables. In technical terms, country and role (principal or teacher) were the antecedent (or independent) variables and the consequent (or dependent) variables were the attitudes of principals and teachers towards teacher involvement in school change and development projects and activities. Demographic variables were considered to be potential moderators that might affect the relationship between the antecedent and consequent variables. For example, teachers may be more likely to perceive a same-sex principal as more supportive than an opposite-sex principal.

L. S. COLLET

12

It would also seem self-evident that attitudes could be influenced by the type of activity involved. For instance, teachers might be more interested and principals more supportive of teacher involvement in a curriculum development activity rather than planning and conducting staff meetings. The current study was designed to account for such “educational domain” effects.

Six interrelated questions derive from these considerations. The purpose of this study was to answer these questions.

1. How much teacher involvement do principals want, and do they believe teachers wish to be that involved?

2. How much involvement do teachers actually want to have, and do they believe principals will support that level of involvement?

3. How accurately do principals and teachers estimate each other’s attitude towards teacher involvement?

4. Are principal and teacher attitudes influenced by the educational domain involved?5. Are principal and teacher attitudes influenced by the demographic characteristics

of their country?6. Does the country or culture in which one lives affect these attitudes above and

beyond demographics?

DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF THE QUESTIONNAIRES

Two questionnaires were used in this study: one for principals and one for teachers. The survey questionnaire for principals was developed and validated first. Then the findings of the validation study were used to develop a parallel version of the questionnaire for use with teachers.

Principal Questionnaire

It is the policy of the editors to minimize the size and number of tabular illustrations in this book. Since the principal questionnaire contains three pages, the contents will be described rather than providing a printed example.

Demographics. The first page of the questionnaire contained an introductory letter that requested the participating principals to provide the following personal demographic information: gender, age, years of teaching experience, years of principal experience, and the number of students enrolled in their school.

Questionnaire items. The items in the survey dealt with improvement or change responsibilities that are typical of secondary schools and might involve teachers. An effort was made to include activities with a wide variety of purposes. These ranged from improving classroom learning to developing school-wide student discipline policies to improving relationships among school personnel or between the school and various


13

external client groups. A list of the twenty change and development responsibilities that were included in the questionnaire appears in Table 2-1, below. Principals were asked the same four questions about each of these responsibilities in turn.

Table 2-1. Twenty possible responsibilities of teachers in school change

1. In deciding on the number of students for different classes. 2. In developing new departmental courses for students. 3. In organizing supportive assistance for the teachers. 4. In developing policies on professional benefits for teachers in the school. 5. In planning school changes curriculum content, method, and materials. 6. In developing professional inservice programs for teachers. 7. In formulating changes the school’s teacher-administration relationships. 8. In implementing the new changes the school. 9. In giving organized feedback to the school’s administrators and staff.10. In conducting meetings of the teachers and staff.11. In setting policies for student behavior.12. In setting policies and criteria for hiring teachers.13. In evaluating the effects of school changes.14. In developing and conducting information programs for teachers.15. In deciding on the distribution of the school’s budget.16. In setting policies for changes in parent involvement.17. In developing approaches to the induction of new teachers.18. In creating new ways to improve the school’s relationship to the community.19. In planning innovative ways of class scheduling for teachers and students.20. In organizing new programs for the use of volunteers in the school.

Questions asked. The body of the questionnaire was a five-column table printed in landscape format on the second and third pages of the instrument. The first column on these pages contained the twenty items in Table 2-1, printed ten items per page, and had the column heading “Twenty possible responsibilities of teachers in school change.”

The next four columns of the questionnaire were labeled columns A, B, C, and D. Each column had a question in the heading which was to be answered in the space provided on each item line. The questions in columns A, B, and C were in five-point multiple-choice format as shown in Table 2-2. These questions were answered by circling the appropriate response. Column D had space for a brief written comment about each item.

L. S. COLLET

14

The column D comments were subsequently coded by the country teams into a three-category numeric response: 1=the comment supports teacher involvement in the responsibility, 2=the comment opposes teacher involvement in the activity, 3=the comment provides conditional support or opposition. These coded responses were recorded in the databank and used in the questionnaire validation.

The actual questions asked about each responsibility item appear in Table 2-2. All four questions illustrated in the table were asked about each of the twenty responsibility items in Table 2-1. The numeric responses to each question were recorded in the cross-cultural data and are referred to as the PA, PB, PC, and PD scores respectively.

Table 2-2. Four questions asked of principals about each responsibility item

A. How much do you think teachers wish to take part in this responsibility? (1) None, (2) Little, (3) Some, (4) Much, (5) Very MuchB. How much do you feel teachers should take part in this responsibility? (1) None, (2) Little, (3) Some, (4) Much, (5) Very MuchC. How hesitant do you feel about teachers taking part in this responsibility? (1) None, (2) Little, (3) Some, (4) Much, (5) Very MuchD. Briefly say why you have whatever level of hesitancy you have just indicated.

Creating and Validating Indexes

The next step was to cluster items according to the educational domain being assessed. The mean of each cluster would then become an index of that educational domain.

There are several advantages to developing educational domain indexes. First, indexes reduce the dimensionality of the data so that we have four or five categories rather than 20 individual items to interpret. Second, indexes tend to be more reliable than individual items, thus providing more power to identify similarities and differences among data sources. Third, indexes can be thought of as representative of a class of change activities so that we can generalize findings about a particular index to other activities in that class that are not represented in the 20 items. For example, findings about an index of administration activities could be generalized to an activity such as timetabling, which was not included in our 20 items.

An important theoretical requirement for efficient data analysis was that the same indexes could be used with the PA, PB, PC, and PD responses. Two favorite methods of data reduction, factor analysis and cluster analysis were rejected because they yielded different indexes for these three response scales. A more complete rationale and statistical support for the rejection decision was provided in Collet (2004).

Index scores calculated as the means of thematically clustered items are an alternative to factor and cluster analysis. This procedure has the additional advantage


15

that it provides evidence of the construct validity of the original items as well as the indexes derived from the item clusters used. Construct validity, which Kerlinger (1971, p. 461) believed to be “one of the most significant advances in modern measurement theory and practice”, uses a theoretical model of the qualities being assessed to derive hypotheses about the relationships that will be obtained when the instrument is used in the field. If the hypotheses are confirmed by statistical analysis, it tends to confirm the validity of both the instrument and the theory from which the hypotheses were derived.

Role expectation theory. In selecting a basis for clustering items, it was preferable that the theory used would support the hypothesis that the same pattern of index scores (low to high) would be found in each country. This would allow us to “fine tune” the item clusters using the index means for all ten countries combined, and then test the validity of the revised clusters by looking at the pattern of means obtained in each individual country. While there was no direct evidence that the roles and expectations for principals and teachers were the same in all ten countries in our sample; experience in this project and previous CCCRE studies suggested that there were broad similarities. Although the theory presented here is based on American studies, it was explicitly hypothesized that the same general pattern would apply in all ten countries.

The theoretical approach adopted here was based on the Getzels-Guba systems model of school operation as described by Hoy and Miskel (1987, chapter 3). In this view, the role expectations developed from the prior experience of teachers and principals would influence present attitudes. In this study, these role expectations were hypothesized to be a primary determiner of both principal support for involvement and teacher willingness to be involved.

Role expectation for teachers. In general, a teacher is expected to “plan learning experiences for the students and present them in a pedagogically effective manner” (Hoy & Miskel, 1987, p. 60). At a base level in the United States, this involves the interpretation of curricular materials approved by the School Board and/or the State Department of Education. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing professional expectation that teachers should have a major role in planning curricular materials. In fact, United States courts have upheld the right of teachers to select teaching “techniques and materials that are relevant” so long as the content was not specifically proscribed by the State (Guthrie & Reed, 1991).

For purposes of this study the primary role expectation for a teacher was defined to encompass any change that had a direct impact on classroom activities.

Role expectation for principals. According to Guthrie & Reed (1991), the principal of a secondary school in the United States is an executive officer, responsible to the local Board of Education, who is generally a full-time administrator with no teaching responsibilities. But school districts vary widely in the authority they cede

L. S. COLLET

16

to principals. In decentralized districts, the principal functions as a Chief Executive Officer with the same powers in his building that a superintendent has for the district. In centralized districts, the principal implements and enforces detailed regulations and procedures provided by the district.

The U. S. situation was summarized by Hoy & Miskel (1987, pp. 9–10): “As a result of the move toward site-based management during recent decades, the role for a principal is quite similar to that for most other administrators: they should plan, organize, supervise, coordinate, and control the activities of subordinates.”

But principals are also more subject to environmental forces – particularly parents – than other administrators. According to a normative study by Sergiovanni et al (1987, pp. 287–88) the principal is expected to be “the supreme keeper of the children and the guardian of their welfare”. Parents and community leaders expect principals to provide a safe environment and fair treatment for their children, and to ensure their orderly educational progress. Teachers, on the other hand, expect the principal to provide a sense of order and a feeling of educational purpose. Thus, principals frequently are forced to be intermediaries between teachers and parents.

For purposes of this study, the primary role expectation for the principal was defined as the administrator of the school who plans, organizes, supervises, and/or coordinates the activities of teachers, staff, and students in order to meet the safety concerns and educational expectations of parents and the community.

Index Clusters and Hypothesized Relationships

The role expectations above were used to cluster the twenty responsibility items into four positions on a continuum running from a primary principal responsibility to a primary teacher responsibility. Four groupings were used to provide a decent amount of data reduction and the potential of five items per category, which should yield an acceptable level of index reliability. The positions might be thought of as: (1) primarily a principal role, (2) mostly a principal role with some teacher responsibility, (3) a principal role with major teacher responsibility, and (4) primarily a teacher responsibility with some principal participation.

The PB scores (how much involvement principals thought teachers should have) were used to validate the index assignments. Successive approximations were used to assign items to clusters representing these four positions. First a panel of educators was asked to nominate clusters of four or five items that met each of the four criteria listed above. Then a random 25% sub-set of the Ten-Country pool of principal data was used to calculate index correlations. These preliminary results were submitted to the panel of educators who used them to identify possible misclassifications and suggest appropriate changes. The index reliability scores were then recalculated using first the same dataset and then a second 25% random sample. This process was repeated until the average reliability for each index was an acceptable level, which was defined as a Cronbach α of at least 0.65.


17

Educational domain indexes. The four educational domain labels identified by the process described above, and the clusters of items contained in each domain are listed below.

• Administration-Coordination index. Items 1, 10, 12, and 15 were assigned to this cluster; and the index score is computed as the mean of these four items.

• Human Relations index. Items 7, 9, 16, 18, and 20 were assigned to this cluster; and the index score is computed as the mean of these five items.

• Teacher Support index. Items 3, 4, 6, 14, and 17 were assigned to this cluster; and the index score is computed as the mean of these five items.

• Classroom Learning index. Items 2, 5, 11, and 19 were assigned to this cluster; and the index score is computed as the mean of these four items.

It was hypothesized that, because of theoretically increasing amounts of teacher involvement, the index means for the four clusters would increase in the order listed. Using the first letters of index names for convenience this is called the AHTC order. Note, however, that the critical prediction was that A<C in all cases. That is, there should always be less teacher involvement in Administration-Coordination than in Classroom Learning. If this relationship were violated it would call the role-expectation theory into question.

It should be obvious that the four indexes listed above account for only 18 items. The two remaining items form the Evaluation index. This index was not included in the increasing-involvement hypothesis because role theory did not provide a clear indication of where it should fit. However, previous experience led us to expect an evaluation mean approximately the same size as the Classroom Learning index. There was also an obvious need for a measure of the overall impact of the combined domains. These considerations resulted in two additional indexes:

• Evaluation index. Items 8 and 13 were assigned to this cluster; and the index score was computed as the mean of these two items.

• Grand Mean index. In addition to the five index means listed above, the grand mean of all 20 items was required for validation purposes. This index provided a measure of the overall impact of the PB items.

Observed index order. The values for the index domains were then computed using the entire Ten-Country sample of PB scores. The observed means, in order of size, were: Administration & Coordination (3.12), Human Relations (3.65), Teacher Support (3.80), and Classroom Learning (4.05). These index means were in the hypothesized order with all differences statistically significant.

Although it was not part of the formal hypothesis, the index mean for Evaluation (4.05) was also in the expected range (about the same as Classroom Learning). The Ten-Country Grand Mean (3.70) suggests that the average principal expects a substantial amount of teacher involvement in most responsibilities.

L. S. COLLET

18

Index application to PA and PC. The clusters defined above were used to develop a parallel set of indexes for PA scores, which measured principal estimates of teacher involvement wishes. Since PA scores should be influenced by the same role expectations, it was hypothesized that the ascending rank order of the primary index means for the combined countries would also be in the order AHTC.

The observed index means for these PA indexes were also in the hypothesized order: Administration (3.06), Human Relations (3.12), Teacher Support (3.36), and Classroom Learning (3.62). All differences between pairs of means were again statistically significant. It was concluded that the pattern of observed outcomes confirms the validity of the role expectation theory for PA indexes.

The previous line of reasoning also applies to PC scores, which measure hesitancy. But because Hesitation scores measured a negative outcome, these index means were hypothesized to decrease in the order AHTC. As predicted, the ordered Hesitation means were: A=2.04, H=1.89, T=1.86, and C=1.85. The Administration mean was significantly higher than all other means, but the Human Relations, Teacher Support, and Classroom Learning means did not differ significantly from one another. Despite the non-significant differences, the fact that the index means were in the predicted order provides mild additional support for the role expectation theory.

Index validation from comment data. The written comments in column D of the principal questionnaire offered an independent qualitative assessment of the numeric validation results. The team members in each of the ten countries had coded the comment attached to each individual item as either: (1) supporting teacher involvement, (2) opposing teacher involvement, or (3) giving conditional support or opposition. If the differences among index scores indeed represented increasing amounts of principal belief in teacher involvement, the percentage of supportive comments attached to items in each index cluster ought to increase in the order AHTC, and the percentage of opposed comments ought to decrease in the same order.

When averaged over all ten countries, the percentage of principal comments associated with each index category that supported teacher involvement increased in the predicted order: Administration=28.9%, Human Relations=43.3%, Teacher Support=48.4%, and Classroom Learning=51.7%. In addition, the percentage of comments that opposed teacher involvement decreased in the predicted order: Administration=49.5%, Human Relations=36.9%, Teacher Support=35.0%, and Classroom Learning=34.6%. The combined results of these two comment analyses support the results from the numeric data, and provide powerful supplementary evidence of the validity of the index scales and the role expectation theory from which they were derived.

Problems with the Principal Questionnaire. Despite the generally positive outcomes reported above, there were two problems with the Hesitation and Comment responses. As demonstrated above, the analysis of Hesitation scores produced much weaker results than the PA and PB scores. A major cause of this weakness was a severely restricted range of score values (there were almost no scores above a “3”).


19

There was also a great deal of missing data in some countries. It was therefore decided not to use Hesitation scores in cross-cultural comparisons.

Similarly, comment data were missing for many items in most countries. What was of most concern was the observation that the number of comments appeared to be related to the item’s position in the list, with items at the beginning of the list having more comments than items toward the end of the list. To check on this perception, the questionnaire item number was correlated with the number of comments for that item. The obtained Ten-Country correlation was 0.75, which was highly significant. Similar computations for each country yielded non-significant correlations in Australia, Israel, and South Africa but significant correlations in all other countries. This phenomenon was attributed to response fatigue in which responders became less willing to comment as they went through the questionnaire.

A subsequent, detailed analysis was conducted to check whether response fatigue affected the comment percentages used for index validation in the previous section. It was determined that, because each index contained items from both ends of the list, the response-fatigue errors balanced out and the relationships among comment percentages for indexes remained valid. Nevertheless, the large country-to-country variations in missing data made the Hesitation and coded Comment variables inappropriate for cross-cultural comparisons. As a result of these weaknesses, only the PA and PB scores from the principal questionnaire were used in the cross-cultural analyses, with both Hesitation and Comment data omitted.

Teacher Questionnaire

The weaknesses identified above suggested that the Teacher Questionnaire should use the same format as the Principal Questionnaire, but only the PA and PB questions. The Teacher Questionnaire again used the 20 responsibility items in Table 2-1. But the column A and B questions on the Teacher Questionnaire were the mirror image of the principal questions, with A asking about the teacher’s personal involvement wishes and B about his or her beliefs regarding principal attitudes towards teacher involvement. The actual questions asked about each item appear in Table 2-3 below.

Table 2-3. Two questions asked of teachers about each questionnaire item

A. How much do you wish to take part in this responsibility? (1) None, (2) Little, (3) Some, (4) Much, (5) Very MuchB. In your opinion, how much does your principal think teachers should take part in this

responsibility? (1) None, (2) Little, (3) Some, (4) Much, (5) Very Much

Index validation for teacher scores. Using the practice developed previously, the column A scores were labeled TA and column B scores were labeled TB.

L. S. COLLET

20

Since role expectation theory applied equally to principal and teacher responses, it was hypothesized that the Ten-Country index means for both TA and TB would increase in the same AHTC order as the principal indexes. An analysis of the teacher data for all ten countries confirmed that hypothesis for both TA and TB indexes. The observed index means for TA were: Administration=3.23, Human Relations=3.33, Teacher Support=3.48, and Classroom Learning=3.78. The means for the TB indexes were: Administration=2.78, Human Relations=3.24, Teacher Support=3.32, and Classroom Learning=3.51. All differences among index means were statistically significant for both TA and TB. These results again confirm the validation hypothesis and the role theory from which it was derived.

Functionally descriptive variable names. The relationship between the principal and teacher scores was clarified by noticing that both principals and teachers assign two involvement ratings to each responsibility item: (1) their Preference – the level of teacher involvement in the listed activity they personally prefer, and (2) their Estimate – the level of teacher involvement that they estimate their role counterpart would prefer.

The application of these two observations to our four sets of scores provides formal names that specify the function of each variable and the reciprocal relationship between the principal and teacher versions. PA scores are labeled Principal Estimates (of Teacher Preferences); PB scores are labeled Principal Preferences (for teacher involvement); TA scores are labeled Teacher Preferences (for personal involvement); and TB scores are labeled Teacher Estimates (of Principal Preferences). These formal names are used in the rest of this book. In most contexts the variables are referred to by their italicized labels with the parenthesized expressions understood.

Questionnaire Validation Conclusions

The complete validation results for both the principal and teacher questionnaires are summarized in Tables 2-4 and 2-5, which appear on the following pages.

Table 2-4 provides a succinct summary of the validation information presented previously. The first column lists the five index variables with each followed by the items (labeled Q1 through Q20) clustered and averaged to obtain the index scores. The items in each index are operational definitions of the index meanings.

The next four columns in Table 2-4 provide the Ten-Country index and item means of the four teacher involvement variables identified in the column headings. As indicated in these headings, the principal means are derived from responses to 540 Principal Questionnaires, and the teacher means from responses to 1185 Teacher Questionnaires. On rare occasions a principal or teacher failed to respond to one or two items. When this happened, the item and index means were calculated as the average of the responses that were present. However, because of the very large number of cases, the small amount of missing data had no measurable effect on either the index means or individual item means.


21

Questionnaire Items Clustered Within Indexes

P.EstPrincipalEstimatesof TeacherPreferencesN=540

P.PrefPrincipalPreferencesfor TeacherInvolvementN=540

T.PrefTeacherPreferences for PersonalInvolvementN=1185

T.EstTeacherEstimatesof PrincipalPreferencesN=1185

Ten Country Trend: Grand Means of all 20 items.

3.29 3.70 3.47 3.25

A. Administration-Coordination Indexes (Mean of 4 items).

3.06 3.12 3.23 2.78

Q1. Decide number of students per class.

3.51 3.15 3.72 2.76

Q10. Conduct meetings of teachers & staff.

2.87 3.40 3.01 3.09

Q12. Set criteria for hiring teachers.

2.79 2.92 3.07 2.70

Q15. Decide the distribution of the school budget.

3.08 3.06 3.14 2.67

H. Human Relations Indexes (Mean of 5 items).

3.12 3.65 3.33 3.24

Q7. Change Teacher-Administrator relations.

3.22 3.51 3.57 3.27

Q9. Give organized feedback to administrators.

3.45 3.89 3.66 3.43

Q16. Set policies for parent involvement.

3.13 3.65 3.30 3.26

Q18. Improve school's relationship to community.

3.01 3.76 3.29 3.35

Q20. Organize new programs for volunteers.

2.81 3.48 2.86 2.99

T. Teacher Support Indexes (Mean of 5 items).

3.36 3.80 3.48 3.32

Q3. Organize assistance for teachers.

3.46 3.82 3.70 3.47

Q4. Develop professional teacher benefits.

3.62 3.84 3.64 3.30

Q6. Develop professional teacher in-service.

3.34 3.82 3.49 3.41

(Continued)

Table 2-4. Index and item means for the preferences and estimates of principals and teachers in all ten countries combined

L. S. COLLET

22

Questionnaire Items Clustered Within Indexes

P.EstPrincipalEstimatesof TeacherPreferencesN=540

P.PrefPrincipalPreferencesfor TeacherInvolvementN=540

T.PrefTeacherPreferences for PersonalInvolvementN=1185

T.EstTeacherEstimatesof PrincipalPreferencesN=1185

Q14. Develop information programs for teachers.

3.22 3.78 3.30 3.34

Q17. Develop induction programs for new teachers.

3.19 3.76 3.31 3.17

C. Classroom Learning Indexes (Mean of 4 items).

3.62 4.05 3.78 3.51

Q2. Develop new departmental courses.

3.58 4.12 3.83 3.62

Q5. Plan changes in curriculum content.

3.73 4.19 3.99 3.74

Q11. Set policies for student behavior.

3.92 4.17 3.87 3.57

Q19. Plan innovative ways of class scheduling.

3.25 3.72 3.44 3.14

E. Evaluation Indexes (Mean of 2 items).

3.40 4.05 3.64 3.50

Q8. Implement new changes in school.

3.46 4.12 3.80 3.68

Q13. Evaluate effects of school change.

3.34 3.99 3.50 3.36

Observed order of primary index means in each column:

A H T C A H T C A H T C A H T C

Observed position of Evaluation in ordered means:

A H TE C A H T CE A H T E C A H T EC

Notes: 1. The hypothesized order of the primary (medium gray) index means is A H T C.2. E is excluded from the hypothesis, but is informally expected to be about equal to C.3. Means underscored by the same line form a homogenous set; the associated means

are NOT significantly different and can be treated as tied scores.

Table 2-4. (Continued)

The observed order of index means for each column appears in the second row from the bottom in Table 2-4. The fact that none of these indexes are underscored indicates that the four means in each column are all significantly different from one another.


23

The last row of the table displays the position of the Evaluation mean in the ordered primary means. Note that, as expected, the Evaluation mean was just below or just above the Classroom Learning mean in all four columns. The underscores indicate statistical ties between the Teacher Support and Evaluation means for Principal Estimates, and between the Classroom Learning and Evaluation means for Principal Preferences and Teacher Estimates.

Index validation in individual countries. The most convincing validity evidence comes from index comparisons in the ten individual countries. The observed order of primary index means in each country and the results of statistical comparisons among them are summarized in Table 2-5. The numeric values of the country means are provided in Appendix Tables A-2 through A-11.

To accurately interpret the information in Table 2-5, it is important to read the notes below the table. The index letters are listed in ascending order of their corresponding means, which appear in Appendix Tables A-1 through A-11. If the index symbols are underscored by the same line, the corresponding means form a homogenous set that are not significantly different from one another. For example, the Australian Administration-Coordination, Human Relations, and Teacher Support means for Principal Estimates may be treated as tied scores.

Sometimes two homogenous sets of means overlap as is the case with the Australian Teacher Preference means. This situation is displayed by repeating the common element and separating them with a colon to indicate two separate homogenous sets AH and HT. Thus, T is significantly larger than A but H is tied with both A and T. The large space preceding the C indicates that the Classroom Learning mean is significantly larger than the A, H, and T means.

The observed order of primary index means recorded in Table 2-5 are almost always in the hypothesized AHTC order of size, with all the exceptions involving a reversal for a contiguous pair of means. Most of these reversals are not statistically significant, and do not contradict the AHTC hypothesis. The general pattern supports the predicted order of index means and helps verify the role expectation theory from which they were derived.

There were, however, two significant outcomes which suggest different principal-teacher attitudes that might be explored in the individual country chapters. The most important of these was the consistently higher means for Teacher Support than Classroom Learning in China. There was also a significant reversal of the Administration-Coordination and Human Relations means of Principal Estimates and Teacher Preference in the Netherlands. The possible explanations for the reversals are discussed in the relevant country chapters.

Critical support. There was, however, a strong positive finding for the most important aspect of the comparison. According to the role expectation theory developed earlier, it was critical that both principals and teachers should prefer

L. S. COLLET

24

and estimate higher levels of teacher involvement in Classroom Learning activities than Administration undertakings. If this prediction was not confirmed in all countries, it would cast doubt on the entire role expectation theory. Fortunately, that did not happen. There are 40 order-of-size comparisons displayed in Table 2-5. The Classroom Learning mean was significantly larger than the Administration-Coordination mean in all forty instances. This finding provides convincing evidence of the legitimacy of role expectation theory and the validity of the index scores derived from its application.

Reliabilities of principal and teacher indexes. The reliability coefficients for indexes used in this study were calculated using both the Cronbach alpha and Guttman split-half procedures. In interpreting these coefficients, however, we should be aware of the relationship between index reliability and the number of items the index contains. Since each item score contains an error component, with positive and negative errors being equally likely, the measurement errors come closer and closer

Table 2-5. Observed order and significant differences among primary index means in each country

Country Principal Estimates of Teacher Preferences

Principal Preferencesfor Teacher Involvement

Teacher Preferencesfor Personal Involvement

Teacher Estimatesof Principal Preferences

Ten-Country Trend A H T C A H T C A H T C A H T C01.Australia AHT C A HT C AH:HT C A HT C02.Canada A H T C A HTC AHT C A THC03.China AH:HC T A H CT AH CT A HC:CT

04.Hungary AH:HT C A HT C AH:HT C A HT C05.Israel AHT:TC A HT C AHT:TC A HTC06.Japan A HT C A HT C AH:HT C A HTC07.Netherlands H AT C A H T C HAT C A H T C08.Singapore AHT C A HT C AH:HT C A HT C09.South Africa AH TC A HT C A HTC A HTC10.United States HA T C A HT:TC AHT C A HT C

Notes: 1. The hypothesized order for the four primary index means is [A H T C]. 2. Indexes underscored by the same line form a homogenous set; the means are NOT

significantly different and can be treated as tied scores. 3. Homogenous sets that overlap repeat the common elements then separate them with

a colon. For example, “AH:HT C” indicates that A is significantly smaller than T but both are tied with H and all three (AHT) are smaller than C.


25

to balancing out as the number of items in a mean increases. Therefore, the reliability of an index mean tends to increase with the number of items in its cluster.

The index reliabilities for the Preferences and Estimates of both principals and teachers appear in Table 2-6, with the indexes listed in order of the number of items in their cluster. Overall, the two reliability estimates are quite close, with the Cronbach value usually being slightly larger. In general, the expected pattern of more items producing more reliability tends to be confirmed. This is particularly true if we exclude the two-item Evaluation values, which are not included in the role expectation hypothesis. For the more important primary indexes and Grand Means, more items consistently produce more reliability. The following interpretations are based on an approximate average of the two reliability values.

Table 2-6. Reliabilities for principal and teacher indexes using Cronbach alpha (α) and Guttman split-half (r) procedures

Index Name Items Principal Estimates

Principal Preferences

Teacher Preferences

Teacher Estimates

Evaluation 2 α=.69 α=.66 α=.69 α=.71 r=.69 r=.66 r=.69 r=.71Administration 4 α=.66 α=.71 α=.72 α=.78 r=.67 r=.68 r=.71 r=.79Classroom Learning 4 α=.73 α=.65 α=.73 α=.77 r=.68 r=.59 r=.68 r=.71Human Relations 5 α=.80 α=.75 α=.84 α=.85 r=.75 r=.66 r=.80 r=.80Teacher Support 5 α=.79 α=.75 α=.83 α=.85 r=.71 r=.70 r=.78 r=.79Grand Mean 20 α=.93 α=.91 α=.94 α=.95 r=.88 r=.88 r=.89 r=.91

Although there is no consensus regarding the minimum reliability required for useful distinctions, it is generally agreed that reliabilities of at least .70, which accounts for about 50% of the variance in the component items of an index, are desirable. Fourteen of the sixteen primary reliabilities met this criterion, and the two that did not – Principal Estimates for Administration-Coordination and Principal Preferences for Classroom Learning – have values that were only a few hundredths below it. Even the Classroom Learning value (.62) accounts for about 40% of the component variance, which is large enough to be of practical value. We can therefore consider these results an acceptable level of reliability for all indexes.

L. S. COLLET

26

THE SAMPLING PLAN

The sampling plan for both principals and teachers used a quasi-random procedure designed to ensure representative samples. The typical procedure for principals was to obtain a complete listing of public school principals in the focal area (for example, in the State of Michigan), and send a questionnaire to a random sample large enough to ensure a minimum return of 50 responses. Wherever possible the requests were accompanied by a supporting letter from the principals’ professional organization. If necessary, follow-up mailings were used to obtain the goal of at least 50 valid responses.

Ideally, two Teacher questionnaires would have been sent with each principal questionnaire so that the principal and teacher responses could have been matched by school. Unfortunately, that was not possible because the teacher survey was not conducted until the year following the principal study and the original principal lists were anonymous. Nevertheless, it was decided to proceed with a technique that assured the teachers came from schools comparable to the principal sample. The usual pattern was to send two teacher questionnaires to each randomly selected school with instructions for choosing the two respondent teachers. Again, accompanying letters from cooperating professional organizations and follow-up mailings were used to assure at least 100 valid teacher returns. Although there were small variations in the procedure from country to country, this description is essentially accurate.

Although the inability to match principals and teachers by school makes it more difficult to establish statistical differences, it actually has a serendipitous advantage. Since the design tends to reduce commonality and emphasize differences, it makes the broad similarities that we found even more convincing. This theme is elaborated in the next chapter.

DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCH SAMPLES

The number of valid principal and teacher returns within each country appears in Table 2-7 on the following page. The target sample size for each country was 50 principals and 100 teachers. However, many countries received more than the targeted number of valid returns. Since unequal numbers did not hinder analysis and should increase statistical power, we decided to retain all valid questionnaires rather than randomly deleting questionnaires to obtain the target number.

Demographic Distributions by Country

Four demographic variables were collected in this study: gender, age, experience as a teacher, experience as a principal, and school enrolment. Age in years and school enrolment (the number of students in the school) were continuous variables.

Since differences in these variables might explain differences in teacher involvement scores from country to country, all demographics were originally intended to be used as covariates in a multiple regression analysis.


27

Tabl

e 2-

7. N

umbe

r of v

alid

pri

ncip

al a

nd te

ache

r que

stio

nnai

res r

etur

ned

in e

ach

coun

try

Sam

ple

Aust

ralia

Can

ada

Chi

naH

unga

ryIs

rael

Japa

nN

ethe

rlan

dsSi

ngap

ore

Sout

h Af

rica

Uni

ted

Stat

esAl

l Ten

C

ount

ries

Prin

cipa

ls50

5064

5561

5059

5050

5154

0Te

ache

rs10

611

010

611

110

313

110

110

017

614

111

85To

tal

156

160

170

166

164

181

160

150

226

192

1725

Tabl

e 2-

8. P

erce

ntag

e of

fem

ale

and

mal

e pr

inci

pals

and

teac

hers

in e

ach

coun

try

Dat

aset

Gen

der

Aust

ralia

Can

ada

Chi

naH

unga

ryIs

rael

Japa

nN

ethe

rlan

dsSi

ngap

ore

Sout

h

Afri

caU

nite

d

Stat

esAl

l Ten

C

ount

ries

Prin

cipa

lsC

ount

%Fe

mal

e%

Mal

e

5028

.0%

72.0

%

5036

.0%

64.0

%

6428

.1%

71.9

%

2240

.9%

59.1

%

6070

.0%

30.0

%

50 0.0%

100%

5925

.4%

74.6

%

5064

.0%

36.0

%

5022

.0%

78.0

%

4940

.8%

59.2

%

504

35.5

%64

.5%

Teac

hers

Cou

nt%

Fem

ale

%M

ale

105

68.6

%31

.4%

109

34.9

%65

.1%

104

72.1

%27

.9%

110

76.4

%23

.6%

103

83.5

%16

.5%

128

24.2

%75

.8%

101

45.5

%54

.5%

100

52.0

%48

.0%

176

71.2

%27

.8%

134

56.0

%44

.0%

1170

58.6

%41

.4%

Cou

ntry

Tota

lsC

ount

%Fe

mal

e%

Mal

e

155

55.5

%44

.5%

159

32.2

%64

.8%

168

55.4

%44

.6%

132

73.5

%26

.5%

163

78.5

%21

.5%

178

17.4

%82

.6%

160

38.1

%61

.9%

150

56.0

%44

.0%

226

61.1

%38

.9%

183

51.9

%48

.1%

1674

51.7

%48

.3%

Cou

ntry

:A

ll C

ases

Tota

l N#M

issi

ng%

Mis

sing

156 1

0.6%

160 1

0.6%

170 2

1.2%

166

3420

.5%

164 1

0.6%

181 3

1.7%

160 0 0%

150 0 0%

226 0 0%

192 9

4.7%

1725 51 3.

0%

L. S. COLLET

28

Gender by country. The gender distributions for teachers and principals in each country and in the combined countries appear in Table 2-8.

The cells of the data rows for principal, teachers and country each contain three elements: a count (number of persons responding), the percentage of females, and the percentage of males. Because of missing data, counts are often smaller than the number of valid questionnaires in Table 2-7.

Since some respondents did not provide their gender, the last row of the table contains the actual number of cases in each country and the percent of cases with missing gender data. The column on the far right contains the corresponding information for all ten countries combined.

Notice that the gender distributions were quite different for principals and teachers. Principals were 100% male in Japan, over 70% male in Australia, China, Netherlands, and South Africa, and majorities of around 60% male in Canada, Hungary, and United States. Male principals were a minority in only two countries: Singapore (36% male) and Israel (30% male).

In addition to distributional differences, countries differ in the amount of missing data. The missing gender data, shown in the last row of Table 2-9, was typically less than 2% for most countries. However, gender data were missing for 5% of respondents in United States; and for most principals in Hungary. Because of a printing error, demographic questions were omitted from the questionnaire used for the first wave of the Hungarian principal survey. As a result, 60% of principal returns (33 out of 55) did not contain any demographic information. Missing data rates are more fully explored in the individual country chapters.

Age by country. The age distribution for principals and teachers in each country and the combined countries appears in Table 2-9. Again the table is divided vertically into four sections. The first section contains data for principals, the second data for teachers, the third pooled data for principals and teachers together, and the fourth specifies the total number of subjects in each country and the percentage of subjects with missing data.

As indicated in the second column of Table 2-9, the first three sections provide the count (number of persons who answered the question) in the first row, followed by five rows of age groups. Age was categorized by decade with the exception of the last category which was extended to account for persons who might be 70 or more.

It is useful to look first at the Total column on the right side of the table. Notice that, in these combined countries only a small proportion of principals (7%) were in their thirties. The large majority of principals were either in their forties (43%) or in their fifties (45%). Only a small minority of principals (5%) were in their sixties or older.

The age distribution of principals in most individual countries followed a pattern fairly similar to the ten-country trend, which had a grand median age of 49.5 years. That is, half the principals were below age 50 and half were 50 or more years old. Notice that, because of the printing error mentioned earlier, age data was not available for Hungary.


29

Tabl

e 2-

9. A

ge g

roup

per

cent

ages

for p

rinc

ipal

s and

teac

hers

in e

ach

coun

try

Dat

aset

Au

stra

liaC

anad

aC

hina

Hun

gary

Isra

elJa

pan

Net

herl

ands

Sing

apor

eSo

uth

Afri

caU

.S.A

.To

tal

Prin

cipa

lsC

ount

5050

640

6050

5949

5026

458

Age

20–2

90.

0%0.

0%0.

0%0.

0%0.

0%0.

0%0.

0%0.

0%0.

0%0.

0%0.

0%Ag

e30

–39

2.0%

16.0

%17

.2%

0.0%

10.0

%0.

0%1.

7%8.

2%0.

0%7.

7%7.

2%Ag

e40

–49

52.0

%64

.0%

54.7

%0.

0%48

.3%

0.0%

40.7

%46

.9%

42.0

%23

.1%

42.8

%Ag

e50

–59

36.0

%20

.0%

25.0

%0.

0%40

.0%

88.0

%54

.2%

42.9

%52

.0%

53.8

%44

.8%

Age

60–9

910

.0%

0.0%

3.1%

0.0%

1.7%

12.0

%3.

4%2.

0%6.

0%15

.4%

5.2%

Teac

hers

Cou

nt10

411

010

411

010

312

410

197

176

134

1163

Age

20–2

915

.4%

8.2%

33.7

%27

.3%

11.7

%7.

3%5.

9%7.

2%3.

4%22

.4%

13.8

%Ag

e30

–39

19.2

%23

.6%

58.7

%20

.0%

34.0

%12

.9%

10.9

%59

.8%

47.2

%30

.6%

32.1

%Ag

e40

–49

34.6

%44

.5%

6.7%

32.7

%34

.0%

50.8

%38

.6%

25.8

%41

.5%

23.1

%33

.9%

Age

50–5

927

.9%

23.6

%1.

0%13

.6%

20.4

%29

.0%

36.6

%7.

2%7.

4%20

.9%

18.3

%Ag

e60

–99

2.9%

0.0%

0.0%

6.4%

0.0%

0.0%

7.9%

0.0%

0.6%

3.0%

2.0%

Tota

lC

ount

154

160

168

110

163

174

160

146

226

160

1621

Age

20–2

910

.4%

5.6%

20.8

%27

.3%

7.4%

5.2%

3.8%

%4.

82.

7%18

.8%

9.9%

Age

30–3

913

.6%

21.3

%42

.9%

20.0

%25

.2%

9.2%

7.5%

42.5

%36

.7%

26.9

%25

.0%

Age

40–4

940

.3%

50.6

%25

.0%

32.7

%39

.3%

36.2

%39

.4%

32.9

%41

.6%

23.1

%36

.4%

Age

50–5

930

.5%

22.5

%10

.1%

13.6

%27

.6%

46.0

%43

.1%

19.2

%17

.3%

26.3

%25

.8%

Age

60–9

95.

2%0.

0%1.

2%6.

4%0.

6%3.

4%6.

3%0.

7%1.

8%5.

0%2.

9%Al

l Cas

esTo

tal N

156

160

170

166

164

181

160

150

226

192

1725

Age

Mis

sing

1.

3%0.

0%1.

2%33

.7%

0.6%

3.9%

0.0%

2.7%

0.0%

16.7

%6.

0%

L. S. COLLET

30

In all nine of the reporting countries the vast majority of principal ages fell in the two categories surrounding the median: that is, between ages 40 and 59. Listed in descending order, the percentages of country principals in this age range were: the Netherlands (94%), South Africa (94%), Singapore (90%), Australia (88%), Israel (88%), Japan (88%), Canada (86%), China (80%), and United States (77%).

But the principal distributions between the (40-49) and (50-59) groups did vary considerably in individual countries. For example, the majorities in the forties category in Australia (52%), Canada (64%), and China (55%), were a decade younger than the majorities in the fifties category in Japan (88%), Netherlands (54%), South Africa (52%), and United States (54%), with principals in the remaining countries roughly balanced between the two categories.

There were also sizable minorities of principals outside of the (40-59) central grouping in some countries. There were significant numbers of principals below forty years of age in China (17%), Canada (16%), Israel (10%), Singapore (8%) and United States (8%). Similarly, significant numbers were aged sixty or above in United States (15%), Japan (12%), Australia (10%), and South Africa (6%).

The age distribution for teachers was generally more uniform than for principals. Averaged over ten countries, about an eighth (14%) were in their twenties, about a third (32%) were in their thirties, another third (34%) in their forties, and a sixth (18%) in their fifties. Only 2% of the combined-country teachers were 60 or older. The median age for teachers was in the low forties, almost a decade younger than the median age for principals.

There were striking country differences in the number of young teachers. The most extreme case was in China where 34% of teachers were still in their twenties. Next in line were Hungary at 27% and United States at 22% in their twenties. China had a surprising 92% of teachers under 40 years of age, far outstripping Singapore with 67% and United States with 53% under 40 years.

At the other end of the spectrum were countries with substantial numbers of older teachers. The Netherlands had by far the largest share of older teachers with 48% in their fifties or sixties. Australia and Japan were in second and third place with 31% and 29%, respectively. China again has an extreme result with only 1% of its teachers 50 or more years of age. Distributions for the remaining countries approximate the Ten-Country trend.

Work experience. As mentioned previously, the questionnaires asked both principals and teachers for the number of years they had taught. Principals were also asked for the number of years they had been an administrator. Since both of these variables overlap with age, they will not be reported in tabular form. The effects work experience has on various dependent variables will be formally assessed in Chapter 3.

School enrolment. School enrolment data appears in Table 2-10 on the following page. Each respondent was asked for the actual enrolment (number of students) in


31

Tabl

e 2-

10. P

erce

ntag

e di

stri

butio

ns fo

r sch

ool e

nrol

men

t cat

egor

ies i

n ea

ch c

ount

ry

Scho

ol

Enro

lmen

tAu

stra

liaC

anad

aC

hina

Hun

gary

Isra

elJa

pan

Net

herl

ands

Sing

apor

eSo

uth

Afri

caU

nite

dSt

ates

Ten-

Cou

ntry

0001

-049

961

.2%

64.6

%7.

2%40

.6%

19.6

%9.

4%16

.4%

1.4%

36.9

%12

.9%

26.7

%05

00-0

999

25.7

%35

.4%

7.2%

52.8

%47

.2%

49.2

%25

.7%

9.1%

46.6

%36

.5%

34.1

%10

00-1

499

12.5

%0.

0%22

.7%

6.6%

17.2

%41

.4%

44.7

%62

.2%

12.5

%26

.5%

25.2

%15

00-1

999

0.7%

0.0%

16.5

%0.

0%14

.7%

0.0%

11.2

%22

.4%

2.8%

15.3

%8.

6%20

00-9

999

0.0%

0.0%

46.4

%0.

0%1.

2%0.

0%2.

0%4.

9%1.

1%8.

8%5.

3%C

ount

152

113

9710

616

312

815

214

317

617

014

00A

ll C

ases

156

160

170

166

164

181

160

150

226

192

1725

%M

issi

ng2.

6%29

.4%

42.9

%36

.1%

0.6%

30.4

%5.

0%4.

7%22

.1%

14.5

%18

.8%

L. S. COLLET

32

their school. The enrolments were then grouped in increments of 500 to form the five categories shown in column one under the School Enrolment heading. It is important to notice that all large schools with enrolments higher than 2000 were placed in the last group.

The figures in the body of Table 2-10 report the percentage of principals and teachers who were located in schools of each size. Although principals and teachers were not generally sampled from the same school, they were usually from the same geographic area. In addition, pairs of teachers were normally sampled from a single targeted school.

These sampling redundancies mean that the category percentages in each country may not accurately reflect the proportion of schools of that size. However, they do provide a reasonable estimate of the school size distributions from country to country. Notice, for example, that in China 46% of respondents were from schools with at least 2000 students. Even the United States, which had 9% of respondents in large schools, was a distant second place. The percentage in large schools for the Netherlands was only 2% and for Israel and South Africa only 1%. All other countries had no respondents in large schools.

At the other extreme were countries with substantial percentages of respondents in small schools with enrolments smaller than 500. These include Newfoundland, Canada with 65%; Tasmania, Australia with 61%; Hungary with 41%; and South Africa with 37%. Note in particular that Canada had no respondent in a school with 1000 or more students.

The causes and implications of particular enrolment distributions are discussed more fully in the individual country chapters.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Several findings and discussions presented in this chapter have strong implications for the cross-cultural analyses that should be conducted in Chapter 3. In the following sections these are grouped in three broad areas: the validity and reliability of the index scores derived from role expectation theory, the reciprocal relationships among the four sets of data collected on the principal and teacher questionnaires, and the findings of the descriptive analysis of demographics.

Validity and Reliability of Index Scores

Strong evidence was presented earlier that the attitudes of both principals and teachers towards teacher involvement followed the order predicted by role expectation theory. Most importantly, both principals and teachers in all ten countries preferred and estimated their alternates to prefer greater teacher involvement in Classroom Learning activities than in Administration tasks.

It was also determined that all six index scores (Administration-Coordination, Human Relations, Teacher Support, Classroom Learning, Evaluation, and the Grand


33

Mean) had an adequate level of reliability to support meaningful comparisons. As a consequence of this strong evidence it is essential that the effects of the educational domain (index scores) be assessed in all cross-cultural analyses.

Reciprocal Relations Among Data Sets

In all ten countries, each Principal Survey Questionnaire produced 20 Principal Estimate scores from column A and 20 Principal Preference scores from column B. Similarly, each Teacher Survey Questionnaire produced 20 Teacher Preference scores from column A and 20 Teacher Estimate scores from column B. Then each of the sets of 20 item scores are clustered as shown in Table 2-4 and averaged to form six index scores: Administration-Coordination, Human Relations, Teacher Support, Classroom Learning, Evaluation, and the Grand Mean. Our data matrix now contains 52 scores for each principal and 52 scores for each teacher.

There are five natural comparisons identified in Figure 2-1. The cross cultural analyses should include a planned comparison for each of these data-set pairs. Comparison 1 (Principal Preferences vs. Principal Estimates) assesses the perceived adequacy of the teacher preference levels that principals expect from teachers. Comparison 2 (Teacher Preferences vs. Teacher Estimates) assesses the perceived adequacy of the principal support levels that teachers expect from principals. Comparison 3 (Teacher Preferences vs. Principal Estimates) assesses the accuracy of principal estimates of teacher preferences. Comparison 4 (Principal Preferences vs. Teacher Estimates) assesses the accuracy of teacher estimates of principal preferences. Finally, Comparison 5 (Principal Preferences vs. Teacher Preferences) assesses the balance (disparity) between principal and teacher preferences. The findings for these five comparisons are presented in Chapter 3.

Figure 2-1. The four sets of data collected in each country and the planned comparisons among them

L. S. COLLET

34

Descriptive Analyses of Demographics

One reason for collecting a variety of demographic variables was the hope that they might be used as covariates to help explain differences among countries. However, the descriptive analyses revealed large amounts of missing demographic data in some countries. The implication is that it is not be possible to use demographics as covariates in the cross-cultural analyses, and that correlational analyses will need to be performed to estimate what effects demographics might have on the preferences and estimates of principals and teachers. The procedures and results for these analyses and the conclusions derived from them are described in Chapter 3.

REFERENCES

Collet, L. (2004, April). A cross-cultural comparison of principals’ attitudes toward teacher involvement. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego, CA.

Collet, L., Menlo, A., & Rosenblatt, Z. (2004). Cross cultural analysis of the effects of educational change on secondary teachers in nine countries. In P. Poppleton & J. Williamson (Eds.), New realities of secondary teachers’ work lives (pp. 245–289). Oxford, England: Symposium Books.

Guthrie, J. W., & Reed, R. J. (1991). Educational administration and policy: Effective leadership for american education (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Hoy, W. R., & Miskel, C. G. (1987). Educational administration: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Random House.

Kerlinger, F. N. (1973). Foundations of behavioral research (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

Sergiovanni, T. J., Burlingame, M., Coombs, F., & Thurston, P. W. (1987). Educational governance and administration (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

LeVerne S. ColletProfessor EmeritusSchool of EducationUniversity of Michigan

Documents

Do Teachers Wish to Be Agents of Change?