Blazing New Trails - Connexions

Complexities in the Workload of Principals: Implications for Teacher Leadership 37
Seven variables listed under the professional service factor (M = 2.46) included the means
ranging from this 2.88 for serving as liaisons to stakeholder groups such as PTA or Band
Boosters to 1.81 for handling communications with media.
In the teacher contact factor, the groupings ranged from working with teachers who are
resistant to change (M = 3.27) to participating in a formal process to resolve staff disputes
(M = 2.68). Finally, the fourth factor, labeled as problem resolution (M = 3.05) produced
scores ranging from 3.39 for resolving problems at the classroom level to 2.80 for assigning
consequences for student misbehavior. These groupings provided evidence that items on the
instrument clustered into appropriate groupings. This pattern of correlation indicated that the
measures in each of these groupings were highly correlated and thus it was likely that they
were influenced by the same factors.
Multiple Regression Analyses
Results from the multiple regression analysis further explained the multivariate
relationship between the stressors perceived by the principal (instructional demands, handling
conflict, professional task management, and personal task management) and the potential
relief that teachers could offer, should they perform the tasks of dealing with instructional
issues, offering professional service, being involved with teacher contact, and active
engagement in problem resolution within the school. Table 3 reports the results of four
separate multiple regression analyses. These tests revealed a moderate effect size with several
variables identified as statistically significant. Specifically, the significance explains the
probability that the observed relationship between these variables occurred by chance and
tells us something about the degree to which the result is representative of the population. We
are reporting significance at the borderline acceptable error level with a p-value of .05,
statistically significant level of p < .01 and the highly significant level of p < .001. The
potential relief in the form of teacher contact produced the most highly significant results
when considering three of the four stressors identified by principals.
Table 3. Results of Multiple Regressions Assessing the Impact of Different Principal
Workload Stressors on Level of Teacher Response and Involvement.
Stressors Problem
Resolution
Teacher
Contact
Professional
Service
Instructional
Issues
Instructional Demands .053 NS .135** .12* .13*
Handling Conflict .184*** .34*** .11** .21***
Professional Task Management .125* - .12* .08 NS -.01 NS
Personal Task Management .04 NS .14** .05 NS .17**
R-square .112 .192 .086 .163
NS p > .05; * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001
In the personal task management factor category, principals reported being
overwhelmed by the job with subsequent loss of joy of all it included, and a sense of not being
able to keep up with the job demands or the work life balance, similar to the descriptions by