The effectiveness of the Montana Office of Public Instruction K--12 school administration internship and the regular university K--12 school administration internship

The problem of this study was to determine if there was a significant difference in the perceived preparation of administrative interns and in the mentoring activities of mentor (supervising) administrators in (1) the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) Internship program and (2) the internship included as part of the regular university administrator preparation program. Perceptions of interns and mentor administrators in both programs were surveyed.;The administrative skills examined were Leadership; Policy; Community Relations; Organizational Management; Curriculum Planning and Development; Instructional Management; Staff Evaluation and Personnel Management; Staff Development; Educational Research, Evaluation and Planning; and Values and Ethics of Leadership. The mentor activities were Relationship Emphasis, Information Emphasis and Facilitative Focus.;A two-way ANOVA was used to test the statistical hypotheses. The level of significance was set at alpha = .05.;All participants of the OPI intern program from 1995--1999 and their mentor administrators were included in this study. For the regular university intern group a random selection was made of those who attained their administrative degree in the years 1995--1999 and their mentor administrators. Forty-two interns and 41 mentor administrators participated in the study.;Besides testing for significant differences between the two intern programs on administrative skills and 9--12, High School, and Grades K--12 were also tested. Of the tests for significant differences on the 10 administrative skills in the two intern programs, there was one interaction of type of internship and size of school district on the administrative skill Educational Research, Evaluation and Planning. Of the tests for significant findings on the mentoring skills, there were two interactions of type of internship and level of internship in the perception of the mentors on Relationship Emphasis and Information Emphasis.;Other results of this study showed that the interns in both the OPI and regular university programs perceive themselves competent or very competent at the end of their internship experience. It was also noted that the mentor administrators perceived themselves much higher in their mentor activities than the interns perceived their mentors' activities.