A study of the leadership practices of North Carolina's public school superintendents, two -year community college presidents and public university chancellors: Implications for the success of the seamless education highway concept
Abstract
The purpose of this research study was to measure the leadership practices of North Carolina's public school superintendents, public community college presidents and public university chancellors. Also, this study compared the leadership practices of the three levels of leaders on the five patterns of actions identified by the Leadership Practices Inventory, including: Challenging the Process, Inspiring a Shared Vision, Enabling Others to Act, Modeling the Way and Encouraging the Heart. This study further investigated whether there was a significant relationship between the leadership practices of chief executive officers at the three education levels and selected other factors, such as: age, gender, race, highest degree earned, years in educational administration, time spent on professional development, and choice of opportunities to learn skills. Data on both the leadership practices and demographic factors were obtained from the research sample of 106 public school superintendents, 53 public community college presidents, and 12 public university chancellors in North Carolina. Participants in the study were asked to rate the 30 items on the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) on a ten-point scale and complete an 11 item Confidential Research Questionnaire (CRQ). The Leadership Practices Inventory was developed by Kouzes and Posner (1997), and the Confidential Research Questionnaire was developed by this researcher. The respondents' ratings of the five patterns of actions on the Leadership Practices Inventory and the responses to the Confidential Research Questionnaire were grouped in three major categories in order to test the six hypotheses. The six research hypotheses were tested for statistically significant differences by descriptive and inferential statistics. Research hypotheses one through five were tested using the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine the differences between groups, and the post hoc Tukey Test was used to determine where the differences existed when shown using the analysis of variance technique. Research hypothesis six was tested using linear regression and one-way analysis of variance. The results of the study indicated that North Carolina's public school superintendents, community college presidents, and public university chancellors differ in leadership practices they reported in general and on two of the five patterns of action. The chief executive officers at the three levels of education did not differ significantly on the selected factors of age, gender, highest degree of education, number of years in educational administration, and the three primary opportunities to learn. In addition, this study provides recommendations and implications of the findings related to the education leaders for the smooth and effective integration and implementation of the seamless education highway concept.
Subject Area
School administration|Community colleges|Higher education
Recommended Citation
Mitchell, James M, "A study of the leadership practices of North Carolina's public school superintendents, two -year community college presidents and public university chancellors: Implications for the success of the seamless education highway concept" (1999). ETD Collection for Fayetteville State University. AAI3027011.
https://digitalcommons.uncfsu.edu/dissertations/AAI3027011