Individual Differences of School Leaders and their Relationship to Variables Connected to School Management
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
ECER 2012 Emerging Researchers? Conference
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Research on school leadership ?has recently become one of the central concerns of educational policy makers? (Huber, 2006, 37). This is mainly due to increased autonomy and direct responsibilities of schools as a consequence of changing educational policies, which do not only take place in Austria, but globally. Accompanying this new autonomy, the responsibilities of individual school leaders have increased strongly and this has ? amongst other factors ? contributed to a lack of suited applicants for school leadership positions (cf. Davis et al., 2005).
When trying to unveil the reasons behind teachers? (who are the pool of potential applicants in Austria) reluctance to apply for a leadership position, a person?s individual traits need to be taken into account as well as situational aspects (cf. Mischel?s conception of dispositionalism, 2004). With regard to teacher?s personality, vocational motivation and interests as well as socio-demographic variables such as age or gender play a role when looking at teachers? wish to change their present career. In addition a number of subjectively-interpreted situational variables, such as the perceived fairness of the application process, have also shown to significantly impact the decision to apply.
Preliminary research shows significant cross-gender effects of school leaders? and teachers? sex on variables which might influence application for leading positions (e.g. job satisfaction, networking and informal discourse). An outlook on an on-going study which examines personal and situational variables of potential applicants for school leadership positions in Austria is presented.
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