High School Principals’ Ability to Estimate Work Time
Time management for educational leaders has remained highly relevant to scholars, policymakers and practitioners. We analyzed survey responses from 98.
- Pub. date: February 15, 2021
- Pages: 53-65
- 507 Downloads
- 938 Views
- 0 Citations
Time management for educational leaders has remained highly relevant to scholars, policymakers and practitioners. We analyzed survey responses from 98 public high school principals to examine the congruency between average total hours they worked per week against the sum total of the average hours worked per week in each of five distinct categories of leadership tasks. The observed congruence was 0.32, while Cohen’s kappa coefficient was 0.10. Female principals tended to underreport, and male principals tended to overreport, total work time. Principals with doctorate degrees exhibited higher congruence than those without, and overreporting was inversely related to highest degree. Principals in charge of large teaching staffs were more likely than their counterparts to be congruent and less likely to overreport total work time. Self-report appears to be an inaccurate method to measure time use among high school principals. If time use is a key component of the quality of principal leadership, more detailed and robust techniques for collecting time use data should be utilized in future studies.
principals time use principalship congruence of time use measurements instructional leadership
Keywords: Principals’ time use; principalship; congruence of time use measurements; instructional leadership.
References
Agresti, A. (2010). Analysis of ordinal categorical data (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Andrews, R. L., Soder, R., & Jacoby, D. (1986, April 20). Principal roles, other in-school variables, and academic achievement by ethnicity and SES [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Andrews, R. L., & Soder, R. (1987). Principal leadership and student achievement. Educational Leadership 44(6), 9–11.
Augustine, C. H., Gonzalez, G., Ikemoto, G. S., Russell, J., Zellman, G. L., Constant, L., Armstrong, J., & Dembosky, J. W. (2009). Improving school leadership: The promise of cohesive leadership systems. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG885.html
Bentley, M. E., Stallings, R., & Gittelsohn. J. (1994). The structured observation technique for the study of health behavior. In S. Cairncross & V. Kochar (Eds.), Studying Hygiene Behavior: Methods: Issues, and Experiences. Sage.
Brewer, D. (1993). Principals and student outcomes: Evidence from U.S. high schools. Economics of Education Review, 12(4), 281–292. https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-7757(93)90062-L
Brockmeier, L. L., Starr, G., Green, R., Pate, J. L., & Leech, D. W. (2013). Principal and school-level effects on elementary school student achievement. NCPEA International Journal of Education Leadership Preparation, 8(1), 49–61.
Camburn, E. & Barnes, C.A. (2004). Assessing the validity of a language arts instruction log through triangulation. The Elementary School Journal, 105(1), 49-73.
Camburn, E.M., Spillane, J.P., & Sebastian, J. (2010). Assessing the utility of a daily log for measuring principal leadership practice. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46(5), 707-737.
Chen, Y. S. (2019, July 5). Interpretation of Kappa Values: Evaluate the agreement level with condition. Towards Data Science. https://towardsdatascience.com/interpretation-of-kappa-values-2acd1ca7b18f
Correnti, R. (2007). An empirical investigation of professional development effects on literacy instruction using daily logs. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 29(4) 262-295. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373707309074
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Larson, R. (1987). Validity and reliability of the experience-sampling method. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 175, 526-536. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-198709000-00004
Day, C., Harris, A., Hadfield, M., Tolley, H., & Beresford, J. (2000). Leading schools in times of change. Open University Press.
Day, C., & Sammons, P. (2014). Successful school leadership. Education Development Trust. https://www.educationdevelopmenttrust.com/our-research-and-insights/research/successful-school-leadership.
Erickson, D. A., & Reller, T. L. (Eds.). (1978). The principal in metropolitan schools. McCutchan Publishing Corporation.
Fink, A. (2017). How to conduct surveys: A step-by-step guide (6th ed.). Sage.
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. Jossey-Bass.
Ghamrawi, N., & Al-Jammal, K. (2013). Time flies – A statement that best applies to school principals. British Journal of Education, 1(1), 52-66.
Glantz, A., Ormon, K., & Sandstrom, B. (2019). How do we measure time? – An observational study measuring the task time distribution of nurses in psychiatric care. BMC Nursing 18(67), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-019-0386-3
Goldring, E., Huff, J., May, H., & Camburn, E. (2008). School context and individual characteristics: What influences principal practice? Journal of Educational Administration, 46(3), 332-352. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230810869275
Grissom, J. A., & Loeb, S. (2011). Triangulating principal effectiveness: How perspectives of parents, teachers, and assistant principals identify the central importance of managerial skills. American Educational Research Journal, 48(5), 1091-1123.
Grissom, J.A., Loeb, S., & Master, B. (2013). Effective instructional time use for school leaders: Longitudinal evidence from observations of principals. Educational Researcher, 42(8), 433-444.
Grissom, J., Loeb, S., & Mitani, H. (2015). Principal time management skills: Explaining patterns in principals’ time use, job stress, and perceived effectiveness. Journal of Educational Administration, 53(6), 773-793.
Gurr, D. (2017). A model of successful leadership from the International Successful School Principalship Project. In K. Leithwood., J. Sun & K. Pollock. (Eds.), How school leaders contribute to student success: Studies in Educational Leadership. Springer.
Gurr, D. (2014). Successful school leadership across contexts and cultures. Leading and Managing, 20(2), 75–88.
Gurr, D., & Day, C. (2014). Thinking about leading schools. In Day, C., & Gurr, D. (Eds.), Leading schools successfully: Stories from the field (pp. 194-208). Routledge.
Gurr, D., Drysdale, L., & Mulford, B. (2007). Models of successful principal leadership. School Leadership & Management, 26(4), 371-395. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632430600886921
Hallinger, P., Gümüş, S., & Bellibaş, M.Ş. (2020). Are principals’ instructional leaders yet? A science map of the knowledge base on instructional leadership, 1940–2018. Scientometrics, 122, 1629-1650. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03360-5
Hallinger, P., & Heck, R.H. (1998). Exploring the school principal’s contribution to school effectiveness: 1980-1995. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 9(2), 157-191.
Hanneman, R.A., Kposowa, A.J., & Riddle, M.D. (2012). Basic Statistics for Social Research (1st ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Hormuth, S. (1986). The sampling of experiences in situ. Journal of Personality, 54(1), 262-293.
Horng, E., Klasik, D., & Loeb, S. (2010). Principal’s time use and school effectiveness. American Journal of Education, 116(4), 491-523.
Horng, E.L., & Loeb, S. (2010). New thinking about instructional leadership. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(3), 66-69. https://doi.org/10.2307/25753685
Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. (1977). The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics, 33(1), 159–174.
Lavigne, H.J., Shakman, K., Zweig, J., & Greller, S.L. (2016). Principals’ time, tasks, and professional development: An analysis of Schools and Staffing Survey data (REL 2017-201). U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands. http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs
Leithwood, K., Louis, K. S., Anderson, S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2004). How leadership influences student learning: The Wallace Foundation. https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/Documents/How-Leadership-Influences-Student-Learning-Executive-Summary.pdf
Mann, J., Have, T.T., Plunkett, J.W., & Meisels, S. J. (1991). Time sampling: A methodological critique. Child Development, 62(2), 227-241. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130999
Marzano, R.J., Waters. T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to practice. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.
May, H., & Supovitz, J. A. (2011). The scope of principal efforts to improve instruction. Educational Administration Quarterly, 47(2), 332–352. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X10383411
May, H., Huff, J., & Goldring, E. B. (2012). A longitudinal study of principals’ activities and school performance. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 23(4), 417–439. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2012.678866
Martinko, M. J., & Gardner, W. L. (1990. Structured observation of managerial work: A replication and synthesis. Journal of Management Studies 27(3), 329–57.
Marzano, R., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to results. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).
Mulford, B., Kendall, D., Ewington, J., Edmunds, B., Kendall, L., & Silins, H. (2008). Successful principals of high-performance schools in high-poverty communities. Journal of Educational Administration 46(4), 461-480. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230810882009
Murphy, J. F., Elliott, S. N., Goldring, E., & Porter, A. C. (2007). Leadership for learning: A research-based model and taxonomy of behaviors. School Leadership and Management, 27(2), 179–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632430701237420
Murphy, J. F. (1990). Principal instructional leadership. In L. L. Lotto & P. W. Thurston (Eds.), Advances in educational administration: Changing perspectives on the school (pp. 163–200). JAI Press.
Ongaga, K., Ombonga, M., Finch, K., & Turner, J. (2020). High school principals’ leadership roles and use of time. Journal of Education and Practice, 11(18), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.7176/JEP/11-18-01
Randall, E. W., & Stone, J. A. (1988). Student achievement in public schools: Do principals make a difference? Economics of Education Review, 7(3), 291–99.
Scott, C., Ahadi, S., & Krug, S. E. (1990). An experience sampling approach to the study of principal instructional leadership II: A comparison of activities and beliefs as bases for understanding effective school leadership. The National Center for School Leadership. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED327943.pdf
Sebastian, J., Camburn, E.M., & Spillane, J.P. (2018). Portraits of principal practice: Time allocation and school principal work. Education Administration Quarterly, 54(1), 47-84.
Sergiovanni, T.J. (2001). Leadership: What’s in it for schools? Psychology Press.
Somers, R. H. (1962). A new asymmetric measure of association for ordinal variables. American Sociological Review, 27(6), 799-811. https://doi.org/10.2307/2090408
Spillane, J.P., Camburn, E., & Pareja, A. (2007). Taking a distributed perspective to the school principal’s workday. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 6(1), 103-125. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700760601091200
Tharp-Taylor, S., Nelson, C. A., Hamilton, L.S., & Yuan, K. (2009). Pittsburgh Public Schools’ Excellence for All: Year 2 Evaluation. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB575-1.html
Tourangeau, R., Rips, L.J., & Rasinski, K. (2000). The psychology of survey response. Cambridge University Press.
U.S. Department of Education. (2014). Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) [Data set]. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/index.asp
Valentine, J. W., & Prater, M. (2011). Instructional, transformational, and managerial leadership and student achievement: High school principals make a difference. NASSP Bulletin, 95(1), 5-30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192636511404062
Weick, K. E (1996). Sensemaking in organizations. Sage.