Session Information
26 SES 08 A, Educational Leadership in an Age of Accountability
Paper Session
Contribution
Since the burgeoning of interest in school accountability, almost perfectly exemplified by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, school principals have been at the forefront of accountability regulation. Public demands for school accountability have turned to principals as heads and representatives of their respective schools. However, relatively little attention has been paid to principals as individuals, and to accountability as a personal disposition. The present study fills this gap in research.
Principals’ personal accountability consists of interaction between two parties: the principal, who is expected to report transparently on school outcomes, and the relevant ‘audience’, such as school board and school community, who respond with feedback, rewards or sanctions (Frink & Klimoski, 2004). External accountability is a principal’s inclination to engage in accountability interaction with an external audience. Internal accountability is a principal’s inclination to report to an inner ‘audience’, such as professional codes and ethical norms (Firestone & Shipps, 2005; Rosenblatt, in press; Wood & Winston, 2007).
The principals’ job autonomy might underlie their experienced external accountability. When perceived job autonomy is high, namely the principal can make independent decisions and run the school with minimal interference, external expectations for accountability will likely be perceived as legitimate. Internal accountability may not be related to perceived job autonomy, because it is driven by inner standards of conduct (Gonzalez & Firestone, 2013). Hence our first hypothesis is:
H1: Principal’s job autonomy will be positively related to external accountability.
The interactive nature of accountability makes it prone to cultural influence. Naturally, cultural values determine human behaviour at work (Gelfand, Erez & Aycan, 2007). Two prominent cultural values that Gelfand, Lim and Raver (2004) linked theoretically to accountability are collectivism and individualism. The present study explores the degree to which these two cultural values predict principal accountability.
People with collectivist values are characterized as members of groups where individual behaviours, thoughts, and feelings are determined by group norms (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). School principals are an inseparable part of the school staff they lead. Because their success largely depends on collaboration with their staff, principals might share their schoolteachers’ values and work norms, thereby cultivating and accentuating collectivist values. The latter in turn may well contribute to principals’ external accountability, because principals need their staff to trust school leadership. Collectivist values may also contribute to principals’ perceived internal accountability, because teamwork is a fundamental factor in school operation (Knapp & Feldman, 2012), and collective principals are likely to develop their composite leadership skills (Dematthews, 2015) to reach the best professional quality possible. Hence our second hypothesis is:
H2: Principals’ collectivist values will be positively related to external and internal accountability.
People with individualist values are typically autonomous, independent and achievement-oriented (Triandis, 1995). These values may well characterize school principals. Located at the highest level of school hierarchy, principals are expected to be ambitious, goal-oriented, and striving for independence. Principals’ individualist values will contribute to their external accountability because they aspire to be highly valued and rewarded accordingly. Individualist values will also contribute to internal accountability, because individualist principals will labour to excel professionally. Hence our third hypothesis is:
H3: Principals’ individualist values will be positively related to both external and internal accountability.
The study’s three hypotheses are tested on multi-country data. Differences among countries in regard to principals’ personal accountability are investigated as well.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Adamowski, S., Therriault, S.B., & Cavanna, A.P. (2007). The autonomy gap: Barriers to effective leadership. Washington D.C.: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Dematthews, D.E. (2015). Clearing a path for inclusion. Journal of School Leadership, 25, 1000-1038. Firestone, W. A. & Shipps, D. (2005). How do leaders interpret conflicting accountabilities to improve student learning? In C. Riehl & W. Firestone (Eds.), A new agenda: Directions for research on educational leadership. New York: Teachers College Press. Frink, D. D. & Klimoski, R. J. (2004). Advancing accountability theory and practice: Introduction to the human resource management review special edition. Human Resource Management Review, 14, 1–17. Gelfand, M.J., Erez, M., & Aycan, Z. (2007). Cross-cultural organizational behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 479-514. Gelfand, M.J., Lim, B.C., & Raver, J.L. (2004). Culture and accountability in organizations: Variations in forms of social control across cultures. Human Resource Management Review, 14, 135-160. Gonzalez, R.A. & Firestone, W.A. (2013). Educational tug-of-war: Internal and external accountability of principals in varied contexts. Journal of Educational Administration, 51, 383-406. Knapp, M.S. & Feldman, S.B., (2012). Managing the intersection of internal and external accountability: Challenge for urban school leadership in the United States. Journal of Educational Administration, 50, 666-694. Markus, H.R. & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110), US. Rosenblatt, Z. (In press). Personal accountability in education: Measure development and validation. Journal of Educational Administration. Rosenblatt, Z., Arato, N., Beek, J.G., Booyse, J., Hurley, N., Philelix, C., Sainz, M. & Wubbels, T. (2016). The moderation effect of school support on the relations between cultural values and teacher accountability: An eight-country study. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), August, Dublin, Ireland. Spillane, J.P. & Kenney, A.W. (2012). School administration in a changing education sector: The US experience. Journal of Educational Administration, 50, 541-561. Triandis, H.C. (1995). Individualism and collectivism. New York: Simon & Schuster. Triandis, H.C. & Gelfand, M.J. (1998). Converging evidence of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74,118-128. Wood, J.A. & Winston, B.E. (2007). Development of three scales to measure leader accountability. Leadership & Organization, 28, 167-185.
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