TEACHER PERCEPTIONS OF PRINCIPALS\u27 PERFORMANCE ON THE NASSP ASSESSMENT CENTER BEHAVIOR DIMENSIONS AS IT RELATES TO THE CONCEPTUAL COMPLEXITY OF PRINCIPALS

The primary purpose of the study was to determine the relationships which existed between the conceptual levels of principals in Nebraska schools and the twelve dimensions of administrative behavior established by the National Association of Secondary School Principals\u27 Assessment Center. Two bodies of behaviorally related theory and information were used to develop the base of the study--conceptual level theory and assessment center technology. The Paragraph Completion Test (PCT) and The Administrative Behavior Dimensions Questionnaire were used to gather data to answer the following research question: What relationships exist between the conceptual levels of principals of Nebraska Class III school districts and any of the twelve dimensions of administrative behavior as perceived by teachers they supervise? Fifty-five principals who agreed to participate in the study were drawn from a population of 495 principals from Nebraska Class III school districts. Four hundred fifty-five teachers rated the administrative behavior of the principals who participated in the study. The principals were placed into one of two groups based on conceptual level scores in order to explore the existence of relationships between the variables of conceptual level and administrative behavior. The groups were based on two schemes: (1) Hunt\u27s Model for Differentiated Stages of Conceptual Level and (2) A Mathematical Model Computed from the Sample Population\u27s Conceptual Level Scores. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze differences between conceptual level groups across the twelve dimensions of administrative behavior. The .05 level of significance was chosen as the criterion for statistical significance. According to both schemes no significant differences were found to exist between principals grouped by conceptual levels and any of the twelve dimensions of administrative behavior established by the NASSP Assessment Center. The major conclusion of this study based on the findings was that the conceptual complexity of principals was not related to any of the twelve dimensions of administrative behavior included in the NASSP Assessment Center