Effect of Previous Role and Experience on Principals\u27 Self-Reported Behaviors

Leading schools in the 21st Century is not a straightforward matter. Principals are responsible for the bifurcated role of managing and leading instruction in schools. However, many administrators lack the requisite skills to be instructional leaders. There are no national or state mandates designating a continuum of previous roles and experiences essential to being an effective principal. Despite the immense pressure for principals to cultivate effective learning cultures, there is limited research linking principals’ effectiveness or the lack thereof to the progression of their career path. Therefore, this research study was designed to add to the diminutive body of research concerning the effect of previous role and years of experience on the development of principals’ instructional leadership behaviors in Arkansas schools. The researcher sought to determine the difference between principals with a previous role as an instructional leader with focused-learning for adults versus principals without such a previous role in Hallinger’s (2011) three domains: Defining the School’s Mission, Managing the Instructional Program, and Promoting a Positive School Learning Climate. This quantitative, causal-comparative study was conducted through the administration of surveys. Surveys were deployed using convenience sampling for elementary, middle, and high school principals across the state of Arkansas. The Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale was used to collect perceptions of instructional leadership behaviors for novice and non-probationary principals. The survey was submitted for analysis by 263 Arkansas principals representing all school levels. A 2 x 2 factorial ANOVA was utilized to examine the data with a 0.5 significance level. There was no statistically significant difference in the interaction for previous role and years of experiences. The main effect of previous role was significant when Defining the School’s Mission and Promoting a Positive School Learning Climate. Likewise, the main effect of years of experience was significant when Managing the Instructional Program