ERIC Number: ED494008
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2006
Pages: 7
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
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Available Date: N/A
Psychosemantics of Management Strategy Notions by Comprehensive School Principals and Vice Principals
Saparnis, Gintaras; Saparniene, Diana
Online Submission, Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research (Geneva, Sep 13-15, 2006)
Purpose: The purpose of the research is to reveal the psychosemantics of the opinion of school principals and vice principals on the issues of the development of school management. Methodology: From the methodological point of view the research is based on the teaching of the empirical social research about qualitative and quantitative research and the principle of their coordination that is triangulation. Results: The basis of the study is a mail survey of a series of open type questions addressed to 187 school principals and vice principals in order to identify the most significant school management mistakes, made by them, and a question of general character clarifying how and in what direction school management should be improved. This article presents analysis of answers given by school authorities to the latter question. The question has been formulated in the following way: "Dear principal, you are aware of the school management strategy. Please, give your opinion and suggestions on school management development". 573 statements--answers have been received. By the means of qualitative (hermeneutic) content analysis the empirical statements have been generalised into 39 semantically homogeneous categories. Further, quantitative data analysis has been applied. Using means of descriptive statistics the categories have been rated according to the frequency they have been mentioned. Applying cluster analysis taxonomy regularities of the categories have been investigated, by means of factor analysis structural regularities of the categories have been investigated (i.e., structural regularities of the psychosemantic system). Conclusions: Semantics of the categories, which got the highest rating, reflect the content of such management theory and practice terms: "democracy" "realisation of innovations", "training skills and studying" "partnership". Generalised survey data allow to state a definite scientific fact: formal administrative fundamentals prevail in the professional psychosemantic structure school management development questions of school principals, meanwhile, educational pedagogical fundamentals, which reflect the task of the school as an organisation, are comparatively peripheral. The survey has revealed collisions of some notions and associations on strategic management. It is evident from categories with basically the same content but of different valency: "School principals should perform only administrative functions", "The school principal must have lessons", "School principals shouldn't have maintenance problems". (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure, and 2 footnotes.)
Publication Type: Reports - Research; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Lithuania
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