Evaluation of the Intern in Educational Administration in Wisconsin and Minnesota

The problem upon which this study focused was the inadequacy and divergence of criteria for the evaluation of interns in educational administration. The purpose of the study, therefore, was to test the acceptability of a theoretical framework developed by the investigator for the evaluation of an administrative intern. Besides assessing the extent of agreement with the framework, the investigator sought to determine the identjfiability of constructs essential to the theoretical framework: cognition, affect, and an overlapping leadership potential dimension. The criteria comprising the constructs were extracted from the literature on intern evaluation. The subjects of the study consisted of three groups of professionals involved with internships in educational administration in Wisconsin and Minnesota over the past three years: (1) professors of educational administration, (2) interns in educational administration, and (3) practicing administrators who hosted interns. These subjects completed a mailed opinionnaire developed by the investigator. Based on a Likert-type attitude scale, the opinionnaire asked respondents to indicate their intensity of agreement/disagreement with each of the 46 criteria proposed, to identify each item as either a cognitive or affective criterion, and to circle the ten criteria which best served to identify leadership potential in an intern. In view of the nominal and ordinal nature of the data, and facilitated by a large sample (n = 610), the investigator employed a nonparametric approach in the analysis of the data, including chi square, proportions test, and Mann-Whitney U Test analysis. Twenty-six. null hypotheses were tested. Results indicated agreement with and consensus on 3.5 of the 46 criteria incorporated in the framework. The greatest degree of agreement was found for the criterion of decision-making skills and the least for that of change-proneness, dissatisfaction with the status quo. Greater consensus was found between the professor and intern groups than between the administrator group and either of the other two on agree/disagree ratings..