VALIDATION OF TENETS OF AN ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT THEORY IN EDUCATION: DIRECTION FOR THE SYSTEMS LEVEL CONSULTING SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST

Though systems level consultation has become a focus of school psychologists, there is no theory on which to base practice. Organization development has established itself in business; however, it has not been adaptable to educational settings. In an effort to describe the functioning of human service organizations such as education, Domain Theory (Kouzes & Mico, 1979) suggests that they are made up of policy (school board), management (administrator), and service (teacher) domains. The regular and normal activities and interactions of domains produce tension, conflict, struggles for control, and uncertainty, resulting in disjunction and discordance. The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable questionnaire based on the descriptions of the policy, management, and service domains and attempt to validate Domain Theory. In the first part of the study, items were written to reflect domain theory in a questionnaire including policy, management, and service subscales. Questionnaires were then sent to board members, administrators, and teachers. Item analysis correlations were used to refine the Questionnaire. The second part of the study involved sending the revised Domain Identification Questionnaire to new groups of board members, administrators, and teachers. For between groups comparisons, multivariance analysis of variance was done. Each group scored higher than other groups on their respective subscale. Split plot, mixed model analysis of variance with Tukey follow-up comparison was done for within group comparisons. Each group scored higher on their respective subscale than other subscales. All results were significant. The findings of this investigation suggest the efficacy of Domain Theory as a base for systems level consultation theory and practice. Possible consultation implications are discussed as they relate to the school system, school board, administrators, and teachers. The success of systems level consultants may depend on their ability to develop interventions based on this new understanding of the makeup of educational systems