Eastern North Carolina elementary school principals' leadership styles and behaviors based on schools' socioeconomic and academic performance

Betsy Correll Huddleston, Fayetteville State University

Abstract

This non-experimental quantitative study investigated differences in the leadership styles and behaviors of elementary school principals in eastern North Carolina, USA. The first comparison was based on elementary school principals in high and low poverty schools and the second on the principals in schools that met and did not meet their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) growth measured by the North Carolina End-of-Grade Test for the 2007-2008 school year. There were sixty-five elementary school principals from 23 counties that were surveyed for this research. The Bolman-Deals' Leadership Orientations (Self) Survey (1990) was used to determine the dominate leadership styles and behaviors. In order to define each principals' leadership styles and behaviors the researcher used Bolman-Deals Leadership Orientations (Self) scale (1990) which uses four frames; structural, human resource, symbolic and political leadership to define leadership. Linked with each frame are the characteristics of the leader. Data were entered into SPSS Version 17.0 and independent t-tests were run. Results indicated significant differences in the use of structural leadership behaviors but not in leadership styles. Principals in low poverty schools and those in schools that have not met the Annual Year Progress used more structural leadership behaviors in their schools indicating a greater need for leader guided processes and procedures to be put in place. Human resource leadership styles were the most dominant in all four principal populations indicating the need for caring relationships in each setting.

Subject Area

Educational leadership

Recommended Citation

Huddleston, Betsy Correll, "Eastern North Carolina elementary school principals' leadership styles and behaviors based on schools' socioeconomic and academic performance" (2012). ETD Collection for Fayetteville State University. AAI3581419.
https://digitalcommons.uncfsu.edu/dissertations/AAI3581419

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