Date Awarded

1996

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Department

Education

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to explore how selected elementary school principals described and defined their world in terms of leadership and management. There were three sub-areas of investigation under this primary purpose: (a) exploring the principals' conceptions about the constructs of leadership and management, (b) exploring the principals' beliefs about the role of their personal philosophies, goals, or values in relation to their practice, and (c) using content analysis to explore the language that principals use to describe themselves, their work and their schools. The theoretical perspective adopted for this study was that organizations are constructed human social entities. The focus of this study was to describe the role of the elementary school principal from the perspective and voice of the participants. The data collection was accomplished using semi-structured interviews of eight selected elementary school principals. Results were presented as narrative description, the principals' stories (hermeneutic representation) and analysis (dialectic) where the transcriptions of the interviews were content analyzed for common themes or patterns. Similarities and differences were explored and conceptions and themes generated from this analysis were compared with the existing literature on leadership, management and the elementary school principalship. The descriptions and analysis provided by this study could be used to inform practice, especially for those involved with the training and education of administrators.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.25774/w4-dpx0-6d52

Rights

© The Author

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