The international study of leadership in education: Monitoring decision making by school leaders

Abstract

School principals have difficulty embracing the competing demands of school restructuring. These demands include being accountable for the outcomes of other decision‐making groups within, or external to, the school community; having strong views while making decisions collaboratively; and using group processes without wasting the time, commitment, motivation and goodwill of those involved. The three sets of tensions were named the accountability, autonomy, and efficiency dilemmas, respectively. This paper outlines the development of an instrument to determine the saliency of particular domains of decision making in which these dilemmas are experienced by school principals. The instrument was trialled in Australia and New Zealand using Rasch analysis to check the fit of items. The instrument is currently being applied in The Netherlands, Australia and Taiwan, with other countries to follow.

Citation

Wildy, H., Forster, P., Louden, W. and Wallace, J. (2004), "The international study of leadership in education: Monitoring decision making by school leaders", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 42 No. 4, pp. 416-430. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230410544044