An Exploration of Principals' Accuracy in Perceiving Their Teachers' Attitudes Toward Interaction with Students.

Abstract

This study explored the accuracy of principals' perceptions of teachers' attitudes toward interaction with students and how various factors, including principals' backgrounds, their similarities with their teachers, and their schools' socioeconomic locations, related to the principals' perceptual accuracy. Forty-eight elementary school principals and each of their selected teachers in an urban, midwestern school system containing approximately 200 schools participated voluntarily in the study. The procedures followed were: (1) each principal was asked to select one among his teachers as "most effective in interaction with students" (in order to provide a constant stimulus figure for the study); (2) each chosen teacher completed the MTAI (Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory) which was designed to illustrate teachers' attitudes toward interaction with students, and two questionnaires illustrating their backgrounds and self-insights; and (3) the principals were then asked to predict their teachers' responses to the MTAI to establish their perceptual accuracy, and to complete background and self-insight questionnaires. The data obtained included the principals' predictions and their teachers' responses to each of the MTAI items, the principals' perceptual accuracy scores, MTAI normative scores of the teachers and of the principals' predictions, and 39 measures illustrating demographic and personality backgrounds of the subjects, principal-teacher demographic and personality similarities, and socioeconomic locations of the schools. The data were analyzed using the chi square, t test, and analysis of variance techniques. The major conclusions drawn from the findings were: (1) Overall, principals were quite accurate in perceiving their teachers' attitudes on the 150 MTAI items; (2) However, on 14 MTAI items, principals significantly misperceived their teachers' viewpoints. For example, on MTAI item #14 which stated, "Young people are difficult to underst and these days", most principals felt the teachers would agree whereas the teachers actually disagreed; and (3) Principals whose predictions were the most accurate were found to have: (a) selected teachers whose MTAI scores were better; (b) perceived their teachers' attitudes more positively than most other principals; and (c) perceived themselves as "personal" in contrast to low-accurate principals who perceived themselves as "businesslike". The study was concluded with suggestions for school practices and future research.