National contexts influencing principals' time use and allocation: economic development, societal culture, and educational system

Abstract

This study examines the impact of macro-context factors on the behavior of school principals. More specifically, the article illuminates how a nation's level of economic development, societal culture, and educational system influence the amount of time principals devote to their job role and shape their allocation of time to instructional leadership, administration, and management of relationships with parents and community. The study employed a 2-level hierarchical linear model (HLM) to analyze data on 5,927 principals in 34 societies drawn from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006. The results support the proposition that principal time use and allocation varies substantially across societies and that these patterns of behavior are influenced by economic, sociocultural and institutional features of their societies. The study contributes to a growing body of research that seeks to understand how the practice of school leadership is shaped by the organizational and cultural context.

Keywords:

• national contexts
• school principals
• time use
• time allocation
• leadership

Notes

 1. An earlier version was presented at the 4th IEA International Research Conference held at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden (July, 2010).

 2. For the purposes of this study, we refer to time use as the number of working hours principals spend on-the-job, and time allocation as the apportionment of that time to different tasks and activities.

 3. There were a few countries whose regions participated in PIRLS 2006 independently (e.g., five Canadian provinces participated in PIRLS 2006 separately).

 4. Because principals completing the School Questionnaires of Norway (5th graders) are the same sample populations as principals responding to the School Questionnaire of Norway (4th graders), information from Norway (5th graders) was excluded.

 5. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient is based on the average of the Cronbach's alpha for individual societies (see the IEA's technical report by M.O. Martin et al., 2007).

 6. Specifically, the highest value means that schools hold teacher–parent conferences and events at school four or more times per year that are attended by more than half of the parents (see M.O. Martin et al., 2007).

 7. As mentioned earlier, there were a few countries whose regions participated in PIRLS 2006 independently. Therefore, a further effort was made for obtaining more relevant information of GDP per capita (PPPs) at the subcountry level for countries such as Canada by further gathering information from different sources such as Statistics Canada (for obtaining province level of GDP), Bank of Canada (for calculating currency exchange rate to US dollars), and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (for obtaining Purchasing Power Parities Data of Canada).

 8. Although the term used in the PIRLS survey is curriculum and pedagogical development, we have substituted instructional leadership in this article in order to maintain consistency with the underlying literature.

 9. The imputation model is compatible with the model used in this study (see Allison, 2002, for more details).

10. We checked the deviance statistics from each of five imputed datasets, respectively. The average deviance statistics was, then, calculated from using a SAS macro that combines chi-square statistics from the five separate HLM analyses.

11. Note that GDP per capita (PPPs) was used as a continuous variable for the HLM analyses, whereas it was used as a categorical variable for a simple comparison illustrated in Table 4. Societies with low GDP based on PPPs: Slovak, Russia, Romania, Kuwait, Indonesia, Morocco, Bulgaria, Poland, Iran, South Africa, and Hungary. Societies with mid GDP based on PPPs: Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Belgium (French), Belgium (Flemish), Taipei, Spain, Italy, Canada (Nova Scotia), Canada (Quebec), The Netherlands, Germany, Scotland, England, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, and Austria. Societies with high GDP based on PPPs: USA, Canada (British Columbia), Canada (Ontario), Canada (Alberta), and Norway.