Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Principals' Self-Efficacy

Lisbon, Portugal, 2006

Abstract

School principals’ self-efficacy and its relationship with Schools’ and principals’ personal attributes.

sazaliy@yahoo.com

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale measuring school principal’s self-efficacy and also to explore its relationship with schools’ and principals’ personal attributes. In the first stage of the study, 40 school principals were invited to provide written description of a number of challenging and difficult tasks, problems and decisions that they had confronted in managing school. Responses from the 40 principals generated a total of 45 problem situations. These problems were then converted into 58 items likert-type scale and named as Malaysian School Principal Self-efficacy Scale (MaSPSES). Experts in the fields of psychology, measurement, and school management were invited to review and validate the scale. In the second stage of the study, the scale was administered to 110 school principals. These principals were participants of school management course conducted by Institut Aminuddin Baki, Ministry of Education Malaysia. Exploratory factor analytic procedures with varimax rotation were used to determine the structure of the scale. Six components were extracted: managing academic success, managing staff, managing pupil affairs, managing school facilities, managing school finance, and managing school-community affairs. Cronbach alpha was used to measure the reliabilities for each sub-scale. Reliability coefficients for managing academic success was r = .987, managing staff (r = .942), managing pupil affairs (r = .920), managing school facilities (r = .787), managing school finance (r = .823), and managing school-community affairs (r = .719). School’s attributes were measured by pupil enrolment and school-type. Whereas, principal’s attributes were age, tenure, number of posts held prior to principalship appointment, and peer-support. Statistics used in the study were eta, biserial, and point biserial correlations, and means comparison. It was found that pupil enrolment was related with principal’s efficacy on managing academic success (rb = - .236, p < .05), managing staff (rb = -.193, p < .05), managing pupil affairs (rb = -.311, p < .05), managing school facilities (rb = -.259, p < .05), and school-community affairs (rb = -.289, p < .05). Peer-support was found to be significantly correlated with managing school-community affairs (rpb = - .210, p < .05). While number of post held prior to principalship appointment was positively related with principal’s efficacy on managing school facilities (r = .255, p < .05). It was concluded that higher pupil population had negative impact on principal efficacy on managing academic success, managing staff, managing pupil affairs, managing school facilities, and school-community affairs. Whereby peer-support was only related to principal efficacy on handling school-community affairs. Interestingly, the number of post held prior to principalship appointment was only positively related to principal efficacy on managing school facilities, and the age of principals did not related to any of the principals self-efficacy subscale. Appeared in the Thirteenth Annual International Conference on Advances in Management Proceeding. 2006.

No comments: