A STUDY OF THE MANAGERIAL ROLE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL PRINCIPAL

This national study was designed to examine the managerial aspect of the public school principalship. Based upon the premise that managerial performance is an integral part of the public school principal's role, the purpose of the study was to explore the managerial facet of that role. The major objective was to determine the principal's perceptions of engagement in management activities and functions. Although a number of studies have addressed the issues of managerial performance within various populations or organizations, specific efforts have not been directed to these issues as they relate to principals in public schools.;For the purposes of this study, the managerial role was defined as including five basic management functions: planning, staffing, organizing, directing, and controlling. Each of these functions was, in turn, a composite of seven management activities. On a scale of one to five, subjects rated both their perceived present and their perceived ideal engagement in the 35 management activities. The discrepancies between the two scores were labeled the Disillusionment Indices. DI's were also computed for each of the five management functions and for the Overall Managerial Role.;A general information sheet was developed to accompany the survey instrument. The purpose of this sheet was to capture demographic data required to determine if there were relationships between certain population variables and managerial perceptions. These variables were stated as seven null hypotheses. The intent of the first null hypothesis was to determine if principals as a group were disillusioned with the managerial aspect of their role. The purposes of the other six null hypotheses were to explore if there were significant relationships between disillusionment scores and the subjects' age, sex, number of years of administrative experience, highest educational degree, managerial assignment, and number of years of classroom teaching experience prior to administrative assignments.;After conducting a field test, the survey was mailed to 1500 elementary, middle and secondary school principals. Based upon the total population listed in Patterson's American Education, it was calculated that a mailing of 1500 should produce a representative sample. A total of 918 principals responded to the two mailings and were included as subjects in this study.;Procedures. Descriptive research was used to obtain the information needed to fulfill the purposes of this study. A management survey instrument, based upon the work of Veiga and Yanouzas with revisions acceptable to a panel of experts, was developed to determine the principals' perceived engagement in the managerial aspects of their role.;Conclusions and Recommendations. An analysis of the data revealed that, as a group, principals overwhelmingly desire more engagement in the managerial aspect of their role as defined by this study. There were significant differences between perceived present engagement and perceived ideal engagement in the Overall Managerial Role, in all five management functions and in 30 of the 35 management activities. In terms of the Overall Managerial Role, there were significant relationships between disillusionment and the independent variables of age, educational degree and managerial assignment. Higher DI's tended to be registered by (a)those principals who are in the 45-54 age category; (b)those subjects who hold doctorate or educational specialist degrees or certificates; and (c)elementary school principals. Another important finding was that the sex of the respondent was not a generally significant factor in managerial disillusionment.;This study clearly demonstrated that concerns about management are important components of the duties of a principal and that additional attention must be given to assisting individual principals to function more effectively in the management aspect of their position.