Perceptions of Principal Leadership Behaviors in Massachusetts in the Era of Education Reform

Perspectives of principal leadership behavior contribute to how prin- cipals and other school leaders understand the role of the principal in an era of significant educational reforms. A Q methodology was used with 30 principals, assistant principals, and other educational administrators working in a variety of roles and different types of districts to ascertain how the perceptions of the school leaders align with reform mandates. Data analysis identified one component that accounted for 41% of the variance observed in the ways that these administrators sorted 21 statements about principal leadership behavior. The quantitative analysis was completed as the first stage of the data analysis; the qualitative data were ana- lyzed to triangulate and cross-check the results of the Q sort. The level of agree- ment among the participants demonstrates a shared understanding of the role of the principal and suggests that principal leadership aligns with the models of site- based management and instructional leadership that support educational reform. Strong school leadership is a recurring variable in virtually every list of attributes of successful schools (Nadeau & Leighton, 1996). Despite the consensus that school leadership is important, there is a multiplicity of perceptions concerning effective school leadership. Models of school leadership, as diverse as site-based management, instructional leadership (Sheppard, 1996), moral leadership (Sergiovanni, 1992), transformational leadership (Leithwood & Polin, 1992), and sustaining leadership (Nadeau & Leighton, 1996), describe different visions of leadership and offer differ- ent prescriptions for what exactly it is that school leaders should do.