Αποτελεσματικός διευθυντής: αυτοαξιολόγηση των αναγκών των διευθυντών σχολείων δημοτικής εκπαίδευσης στην Κύπρο

Περίληψη

This paper uses the gap - analysis technique in order to investigate what the greatest needs of elementary school principals are, as they perceive them, in terms of pre- and in-service education. In essence, the paper attempted to investigate the following three questions: (1) Which are the most important areas (of the 37 presented on a questionnaire) so that an elementary school principal is considered to be effective? (2) Where do the greatest needs for improvement lie? and (3) What suggestions can be made for improvements in the education or in-service development for the principals?
Methods/Techniques/Questionnaire: The population included all 370 elementary principals (or acting principals) in Cyprus. The sample consisted of the 221 (or 58.6 %) who answered the questionnaire. The questionnaire has 37 items divided into seven major areas {school climate; school improvement; program development; personnel management; administration and finance; student manage: professional growth and in-service). It was constructed based on the effective schools research findings from research on the principal ship being carried out in the U.S.A. It uses a Likert-type scale and all items are two-fold: the respondent has to indicate the situation in the principal ship as "IS" now and how it "SHOULD BE". Based on the gap analysis between the two kinds of responses we find which of the items are considered to be the most important as well as where the greatest need for improvement lies. The analysis then indicates in what specific areas and items we need to instigate changes. Results /Conclusions: Some of the main results indicate that the greatest needs for improvement lie in the following areas: (a) To keep informed, analyze, integrate and apply new research findings on how to run an effective school, (b) To make sure that educational program renewal is constant and continuous, (c) To create a vision as to where his/her school is heading in the future and be able to communicate this vision to his/her staff, (d) To be trained and be able to use different kinds of evaluation methods and/or models for teacher evaluation. There were no significant statistical differences with regards to sex, age, and level of education of the respondents. However, there were significant statistical differences among respondents with regards to their years of experience. For example, principals with less than four years of experience felt that the following two issues are far more important when compared with more experienced principals: (a) keeping informed, analyzing, integrating and applying new research findings on how to run an effective school and (b) creating a vision as to where their school is heading in the future and being able to communicate this vision to their staff.