Perception of the principal as the instructional leader and teacher participation in decision-making

The problem identified for this study was to determine the importance of principals\u27 roles as instructional leaders in schools restructured to include teacher involvement in decision making. The hypothesis for the study was that a positive correlation existed between teachers\u27 perceptions of the principal as instructional leader and teachers\u27 participation in shared decision making. Two questionnaires were used to gather data for this correlational study. The Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale developed by Hallinger (1984) was used to measure teachers\u27 perceptions of their principals as instructional leaders and the Teacher Involvement Participation Scale, Version 2, developed by Russell and Cooper (1992) was employed to measure teachers\u27 perceptions of their involvement in shared decision making. Concomitantly, instructional leader behaviors which strongly correlated with particular teacher participation behaviors were identified. The population sample was comprised of 125 teachers who taught in schools within the Mid-Hudson region of New York State. Two different kinds of statistical procedures were employed, descriptive statistics and a parametric procedure, the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients, to determine relationships between perceptions of the principal as the instructional leader and staff participation in decision making. The results indicated there was a strong positive relationship between teachers\u27 perceptions of their principals as instructional leaders and teachers\u27 participation in shared decision making. In addition it was determined that all the instructional leaders\u27 behaviors identified within the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale correlated significantly with the behaviors identified within the Teacher Involvement and Participation Scale, Version 2. The most important conclusion within this study is that a significant relationship exists between teachers\u27 perceptions of principals as instructional leaders and staff participation in decision making. This study also provides information about specific principal instructional leadership behaviors that relate significantly with teacher participation behaviors. During this era of restructuring this knowledge is important as instructional leaders work with teachers in the formulation of collective visions that will achieve equity and excellence in student achievement