0.4 Morrison, m., gosmire, d., & Van osdel, j. (july 2009).  (Page 5/9)

Population

School districts were selected from a total of 167 districts listed in the South Dakota Department of Education, Educational Directory for the school year 2006-2007. This convenient sample was based on school size, geographic region of the state, and administrator’s willingness to participate in the study. Seven school districts, for a total of 131 educators, agreed to participate in the study. Two of the school sites had enrollments of over 200 students, while two had 150 or more students and three had less than 100 students enrolled. All districts participating in the study were located within a hundred mile radius in the southeastern region of South Dakota. There were two elementary building administrators, two middle school principals, three secondary administrators, and one 7-12 principal. One hundred twenty-five respondents were classroom teachers. There were four female administrators and three male administrators, and 42 male teachers and 89 female teachers participated in the study.

Data analysis

Conjoint analysis is a multivariate technique, frequently used in market research, providing insight into how participants develop preferences for products or ideas (Pietzrak, 2006). Conjoint analysis is appropriate for research in the educational arena (Shukla&Bruno, 2001; Wong, Chan, Cardosa, Lam,&Miller, 2004). Shukla and Bruno (2001) suggested that identifying a person’s preference may provide insight into the choices or decisions that they will be required to make in their professional positions. In this study, conjoint analysis is used to assess educators’ perceptions of the value of the professional administrative standards developed by Educational Leadership Constituent Council, as well as, their perceptions on the implementation of these standards in administrative practice.

Systat software is used to determine the means, standard deviations, and frequencies for each survey item. In addition, the Mann Whitney U Test and the Kruskal-Wallis Test are utilized to analyze perceptions based on the characteristics of gender, years of teaching experience, and educational level.

Findings

Seven school sites were included in this study providing input from 132 teachers and eight school administrators. All respondents completed a survey that asked them to rank the importance they perceived for each ELCC standard, as well as, rank how each individual perceived the leader practiced the ELCC standards. Table 1 provides a summary of the means for the teachers’ and administrators’ perceptions as to the ranking of the ELCC standards.

Administrators’ and teachers’ perceptions of importance of the ELCC standards were generally in agreement; however, there is a difference in the rating of the most important standard. Administrators rank instructional leadership as most important, and teachers rank ethical leadership as most important.