The purpose of this study was to investigate the structural relation between kindergarten teacher's propensity(thinking styles, teacher efficacy and goal orientation) and director's transformational leadership, and teacher's role-playing. The research...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the structural relation between kindergarten teacher's propensity(thinking styles, teacher efficacy and goal orientation) and director's transformational leadership, and teacher's role-playing. The research problems were as follows:
1. Is there a significant causal relationship between kindergarten teacher's propensity(thinking styles, teacher efficacy and goal orientation) and director's transformational leadership evaluated by teacher, and teacher's role-playing?
2. Are the relational patterns between kindergarten teacher's propensity(thinking styles, teacher efficacy and goal orientation) and director's transformational leadership evaluated by teacher, and teacher's role-playing different among the groups classified by the year of career as teacher?
3. Are the relational patterns between kindergarten teacher's propensity(thinking styles, teacher efficacy and goal orientation) and director's transformational leadership evaluated by teacher, and teacher's role-playing different among the groups classified by positional status?
A total of 436 kindergarten teachers in D city participated in the study. The questionnaires of kindergarten teacher's thinking styles, teacher efficacy, goal orientation, director's transformational leadership, and teacher's role-playing were used for data gathering.
Descriptive and inferential statistics on research variables were obtained using ANOVA and correlational analysis. For the assessment of goodness-of-fit of the proposed hypothetical model into empirical data, the analysis of path was used. For general statistical analyses and model fit assessment, SPSS 10.0 and AMOS 4.0 were used respectively.
Usually, the proposed hypothesis model can be examined for goodness-of-fit using several different criteria. The most frequent approach is to use the χ2 statistic to determine whether the underlying structure of the actual data is explained by the proposed model. But χ2 statistic has the shortcoming of being sample size dependent, many other procedures have also been proposed to assess the degree of fit and significance of the model. Therefore, in this study, for the assessment of goodness-of-fit, the χ2 statistic was reported along with the ratio of χ2 to degrees of freedom, NFI and RMR. Especially, the cutoff point of 5 for χ2 ratio to df and that of .90 for NFI and GFI, and .05 for RMR were used.
The results were as follows:
First, there were statistically significant differences in kindergarten teacher's thinking styles, teacher efficacy, director's transformational leadership evaluated by teacher, and role-playing among groups classified by the years of career as teacher and positional status.
Teachers with more career years had higher role-playing than those with low ones. There were statistical differences in Type I and II thinking styles between groups classified by career years, but statistically significant difference emerged only in Type I between groups classified by positional status. In the analyses of teacher efficacy, significant differences emerged in general teacher efficacy, but not personal teacher efficacy.
Furthermore, a statistically significant difference was found in mastery orientation among groups classified by the years of career as teacher. But a statistically significant difference emerged in performance orientation among groups classified by positional status.
There was a significant difference in the binding-promotion subfactor of director's transformational leadership among groups classified by the years of career as teacher.
Second, the proposed hypothetical model explaining causal relation between kindergarten teacher's propensity(thinking styles, teacher efficacy and goal orientation) and director's transformational leadership evaluated by teacher, and teacher's role-playing was well fitted to the empirical data.
Third, when analyzed separately based on the career years as teacher and positional status, the proposed hypothetical models explaining causal relation. among research variables were also well fitted to the empirical data.
The conclusions were as follows:
First, there was a significant causal relationship between kindergarten teacher's propensity(thinking styles, teacher efficacy and goal orientation) and director's transformational leadership, and teacher's role-playing.
Second, relational patterns between kindergarten teacher's propensity(thinking styles, teacher efficacy and goal orientation) and director's transformational leadership, and teacher's role-playing were different among the groups classified by the year of career as teacher.
Third, relational patterns between kindergarten teacher's propensity(thinking styles, teacher efficacy and goal orientation) and director's transformational leadership, and teacher's role-playing were also different among the groups classified by positional status.