Book Description
The purpose of this study was to determine which management and leadership behaviors selected superintendents perceived as critical to the position of principal. Differences were examined by gender as well as size of district. A secondary goal of this research was to raise awareness regarding gender inequity that exists in educational administration. The population of the study was all female superintendents in Texas(N=135) and randomly selected male superintendents (N=301). Data were disaggregated by gender and size of district. An e-mail was sent to each superintendent with a web address and an access code. A response rate of 66% was obtained for a sample size of 290 superintendents. The survey contained items on management and leadership skills from the Peterson Managerial Leadership Instrument (PMI) and the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) developed by Kouzes and Posner. Superintendents were asked to respond to the behaviors based on their envisioned best principal. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed for the total group and subgroups. Major research findings included: 1. An independent samples t-test on the PMI determined two behaviors that were significantly different (p