The purpose of this study was to examine the self-leadership and organizational commitment of kindergarten teachers, the relationship of their background variables to self-leadership and organizational commit- ment and the relationship between self-le...
The purpose of this study was to examine the self-leadership and organizational commitment of kindergarten teachers, the relationship of their background variables to self-leadership and organizational commit- ment and the relationship between self-leadership and organizational commitment.
For the purpose, following research questions were set up.
1. What are the self-leadership of kindergarten teachers and the impact of their background variables involving age, academic credential, career and the type of kindergarten on that?
2. What are the organizational commitment of kindergarten teachers and the impact of their background variables involving age, academic credential, career and the type of kindergarten on that?
3. What is the relationship between the self-leadership and organizational commitment of kindergarten teachers?
The subjects in this study were 330 teachers who worked in public and private kindergartens in Gyeonggi Province. An instrument used to assess the self-leadership of the kindergarten teachers was Kim Min-jeong(2007)'s adapted version of Manz(1998)'s Self-Leadership Questionnaire, which was used in this study without any modifications. The other instrument used to evaluate their organizational commitment was Kang Ji-young(2008)'s inventory that modified Allen & Meyer (1990)'s one. As for data analysis, statistical data on mean and standard deviation were obtained, and F-test was utilized to find out the self- leadership and organizational commitment of the kindergarten teachers and the influence of their background variables. And a correlation analysis was employed to look for connections between their self- leadership and organizational commitment.
The findings of the study were as follows:
First, the kindergarten teachers investigated got a mean of 3.77 in self-leadership, which was above the average. They got 3.74 and 3.80 respectively in behavioral strategies and cognitive strategies, which were the subfactors of self-leadership. They scored a slightly higher in cognitive strategies than behavioral ones. In terms of behavioral strategies, they scored highest in target setting, followed by practice, self-observation, clue strategies and self-compensation. Their scores in all the behavioral strategies were above the average. In the case of cognitive strategies, they scored highest in doing activities accompanied by natural compensation, followed by creating required environments, discriminating natural compensation, focusing on the positive parts of work and concentrating on inner compensation. Their scores in all the cognitive strategies were above the average. Among every subfactor of self-leadership, they scored highest in doing activities accompanied by natural compensation. As to the influence of the background variables on self-leadership, they were significantly different in self- leadership according to academic credential, career, the type of kindergarten and age.
Second, the kindergarten teachers got 3.36 in organizational commit- ment, which was on the average. They scored highest in emotional commitment, followed by normative commitment and continuance commitment. Concerning the impact of the background variables on organizational commitment, their organizational commitment significantly differed with academic credential, and age and the type of kindergarten made no significant differences to that.
Third, regarding relationship between the self-leadership and organizational commitment of the kindergarten teachers, there was a moderate level of positive correlation between the two(r= .365), and the relationship between the two was statistically significant. As for the relationship of the behavioral and cognitive strategies, which were the subfactors of self-leadership, to organizational commitment, organizational commitment had a positive correlation to both of the cognitive strategies(r= .357) and behavioral strategies(r= .290), and the relationship of organizational commitment to the strategies was statistically significant(p< .001). As to links between overall self- leadership and the subfactors of organizational commitment, emotional commitment had the closest positive correlation to that, followed by normative commitment and continuance commitment, and their relationship was statistically significant(p< .001). Concerning connections between the behavioral strategies, part of self-leadership, and the subfactors of organizational commitment, emotional commitment had the strongest correlation to the behavioral strategies, followed by normative commitment and continuance commitment, and their relationship was statistically significant. In regard to the relationship between the cognitive strategies and the subfactors of organizational commitment, emotional commitment had the closest positive correlation to the cognitive strategies, followed by normative commitment and continuance commitment, and their relationship was statistically significant. In terms of connections between the subfactors of the behavioral strategies and the subfactors of organizational commitment, emotional commitment, part of organizational commitment, was most closely correlated to all the behavioral strategies that involved self-observation, clue strategies, target setting, self-compensation and practice. But the subfactors of the behavioral strategies had a very week correlation to normative commitment and had no correlation to continuance commitment. In regard to connections between the subfactors of the cognitive strategies and the subfactors of organizational commitment, emotional commitment, part of organizational commitment, had the strongest correlation to all the subfactors of cognitive strategies that included discriminating natural compensation, creating required environments, doing activities accompanied by natural compensation, focusing on the positive parts of work and concentrating on inner compensation. But the subfactors of cognitive strategies had a very weak correlation to normative commitment and had no corelation to continuance commitment.