A Study and Comparison of the Personal Constructs of Management Among Novice and Veteran School Principals

Document Type : Qualitative Research Paper

Authors

1 Professor of Educational Administration, Department of Educational Science, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran.

2 MA of Educational Administration, Department of Educational Science, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran.

3 PhD Student of Educational Administration, Department of Educational Science, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.34785/J010.2021.012

Abstract

Achieving the goals of educational systems and responding correctly to the expectations of students, parents and teachers depend on the existence of efficient and effective educational administrators and their beliefs. Therefore, the attention of education researchers is focused on the understanding of management in educational settings. Since individuals' beliefs cause the creation of personality structures, so the study of managers' personality structures can be helpful in selecting, transferring and relocating educational managers on a scientific basis, recognizing the necessary components of management to establish training courses, predicting future actions of managers and reducing skepticism and uncertainty and identifying the stylistic complexity of managers. On the other hand, structures enable educational administrators to better fulfill their professional mission. Based on the importance of this issue, the main purpose of the study was to identify and compare the personal structures of management among school principals. In the present study, in order to achieve the personal construct of managers, an interpretive approach and a qualitative method of case study were used. Participants included all public school principals in Sanandaj who were employed in 2021 and had more than one year of managerial experience. Therefore, sampling was done in a target based using the criterion method. Also, the number of samples was appropriate for the Repertory Grid Technique which is usually used for the sample with small number, 43 novice and experienced Principal were chosen. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and a Repertory Grid Matrix. Finally, 575 personal construct were extracted during 43 interviews. Content analysis with the unit of subject was applied for the data analysis. The collected data of the personal construct of administrator were classified in 4 main categories and 13 sub-categories, which included issues as morality, relationship, personal features and intellectual-functional. The results of this study indicates that the highest percentage of personal constructs of novice and experienced managers is in the category of communication and the lowest percentage of personal structures for novice managers is in the category of intellectual-operational and also for experienced managers is in the category of ethics.

Keywords

References

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School Administration
Volume 9, Issue 3
September 2021
Pages 150-163

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History

  • Receive Date: 05 August 2020
  • Revise Date: 05 February 2021
  • Accept Date: 22 May 2021

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