A study of the relationship between the levels of consistency of principals\u27 self-perception of leadership styles and teachers\u27 perceptions

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into self-perception of one\u27s behavior as a leader and the perception of his/her leadership behavior by his/her subordinates. The study was conducted using the survey data of elementary schools in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and Knox County Schools in Tennessee. Thirty-three schools from each district participated in the study. Two data-gathering instruments were used in this study: (a) the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire Form 12 (LBDQ), and (b) a demographic data questionnaire that consisted of four questions. To identify the leader behaviors, the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire was used. The demographic data questionnaire was used to collect data in reference to district, gender, employment position, and to identify schools participating in a site-based council. The study examined and tested five hypotheses for significance at the.05 level. The data obtained from the respondents were analyzed and executed in narrative and graphic form in terms of frequency and percentage of each survey item. To further analyze the data, t test and a 2 x 2 factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to test the hypotheses. All t tests were two tailed using equal variances. Among the conclusions resulting from the analysis of the data, the following were deemed to be most significant: (1) Teachers and pupils differ on three of the subscales of the LBDQ. (2) Principals perceive themselves very similarly. (3) Different district teachers whose schools operate under a site-based council perceive their principals\u27 leadership styles differently. (4) Site-based principals perceived their leadership styles differently from non-site-based principals. (5) There were differences between the gender of principals\u27 self-perceptions of their leadership styles with those of their teachers