| Scope and Method of Study. The purposes of this qualitative study were to examine the content, structure and methodology of urban elementary public school principalship, to describe the resulting perspectives which emerge; and to assess the usefulness of Feminist Phase Theory (Tetreault, 1985) for exploring resultant urban elementary principals' perspectives. This study used the qualitative research technique of long interview with four male and four female urban elementary administrators. Collected data were presented in two categories: (1) Ideals of Administration, and (2) Realities of Administration.;Findings and Conclusions. Analysis of the data viewed through the lens of Feminist Phase Theory yielded the following findings and conclusions as defined by these urban elementary principals: (1) The work of administrators centered around those things which maintained the organization and those things which moved the organization forward, (2) administrators did everything, (3) how administrators accomplished their work was through collaboration, communication and shopkeeping, and (4) the discipline of elementary administration was categorized as Phase Three, Bifocal Administration. Given the findings of this study, it was concluded: (1) What the research and literature on the practice of administration said administrators do and the actual practice of administration were quite different. (2) Feminist Phase Theory was useful in looking at the definition of administration in terms of content, structure, and methodology. It provided a unique perspective and allowed the discovery of information related to content, structure, and methodology which could have not been obtained otherwise. FPT was not as useful in the categorization of gendered responses into specific phases. (3) What was described by administrators in this study was not male administration, it did not support what was in the administration books written by men about men. |
