Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine (a) ways in which elementary principals in Connecticut influenced the induction experiences of new teachers and (b) how school leaders professional backgrounds and beliefs affected their approaches to induction. Research Methods: The study included six elementary principals from three Connecticut …

Public school superintendents consider situational and organizational variables when determining whether to involve others in decision-making processes. A sample of 240 superintendents from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho were sent the Situational Administrative Decision-Making Inventory. The sample was evenly divided geographically and by district…

Purporting to test a contingency model for schools, data from 45 Arizona schools and 4 British schools were analyzed and compared to examine relationships between organizational environment, structure, leadership style, and perceived effectiveness. Environmental factors were measured by teacher and administrator responses to four Likert-type…

Principals exhibiting different kinds of administrative behavior tend to be influenced by different kinds of factors, according to the results of two sets of related studies reported in this document. The first set, consisting of three studies of principals and central administrators, explored the factors shaping principals' behaviors when the…

Sixty-nine Israeli school principals completed questionnaires designed to reveal the factors contributing to the leadership styles they used when initiating curricular changes. The principals fell into three leadership categories: "Initiators," who seek change in accordance with long range policies and goals; "Responders," who…

A study of 20 representative primary schools in New South Wales, Australia, revealed that a high degree of principal supportiveness as measured by the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire was associated positively with curriculum decision making by staff groups and negatively with curriculum decision-making by individual teachers. (PGD)

Recent research casts doubt on the commonly held notions that administrators affect student learning through instructional leadership and that changing administrators will improve school performance. To help construct a model for examining the process of leader succession that specifies a number of major school process and outcome variables…