This thesis aims to examine the relationships between the leadership pattern of female principals and the autonomy level of the teachers in elementary schools. By conducting a questionnaire survey, we investigate whether there is any meaningful differ...
This thesis aims to examine the relationships between the leadership pattern of female principals and the autonomy level of the teachers in elementary schools. By conducting a questionnaire survey, we investigate whether there is any meaningful difference in the recognition of the leadership pattern of female principals by the teachers in elementary schools, depending on their individual variables (such as gender, years of teaching experience, and position, etc) and on their school's background variables (school size and years of service of the female principal, etc). We also investigate whether there is any meaningful difference in the autonomy level of these teachers, depending on the above variables. Based on the results of this survey study, a critical discussion is made as to what kind of relationship we can detect between the leadership pattern of female principals and the autonomy level of the teachers.
The survey study was conducted by distributing two forms of questionnaire (one for the study of the leadership pattern of female principals and the other for that of the autonomy level of the teachers) to a total of 592 teachers in a group of elementary schools (244 teachers in 10 mid-size schools and 348 teachers in 10 large-size ones) located in Seoul.
The conclusions of this thesis are as follows :
First, uneffective leadership is the most observed pattern of leadership among female principals and effective leadership, initiating structure leadership and consideration leadership are observed in order.
Second, the teachers have a moderate level of autonomy. They have the highest level of autonomy in the category of 'advising student life', whereas they have a little autonomy in the categories such as 'class management', 'class teaching' and 'teacher life' and are given little autonomy in the categories such as 'research and training', 'participation in school management' and 'school office work'
Third, The teachers in the school whose female principal has effective leadership have the highest level of autonomy and the ones in the school whose principal has uneffective leadership have the lowest level of autonomy. A higher level of autonomy is given to male teachers than to female teachers, to the experienced teachers than to the inexperienced teachers, to the teachers in large-size schools than to the teachers in mid-size schools.