Does the gender of school personnel influence perceptions of leadership?

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the gender of school building leaders (principals and assistant principals), teachers (including intervention specialist, vocational, literacy specialist, special education teacher, etc.) and other school-based roles (school counsellor, school psychologist, social worker, library media, etc.) influences the perceptions of leadership as measured by the Teacher Working Conditions (2008) Survey conducted in North Carolina Public Schools. The study used analysis of variance techniques on a sample that had been selected through data-mining and propensity score-matching techniques to minimise the effects of disparate cell sizes and multicollinearity of confounding variables with gender. The study revealed that the gender of the respondent did not have a significant difference on teacher perceptions of leadership among public schools in North Carolina although the role of the respondent was significant across all dimensions. The interaction effects between gender and role of the respondents were significant on the major dimensions of leadership (School Leadership and Educator Leadership). An examination of the marginal means for the interaction effects indicated that females in instructional and administrative roles had higher scores on leadership variables than males, but females had lower scores than males in the other roles.

Keywords:

• leadership
• educational change
• school improvement
• school effectiveness

Acknowledgements

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.