A variety of conflicts occur when a role incumbent has to conform simultaneously to a number of expectations which are mutually exclusive, contradictory, or inconsistent, so that the performance of one set of duties makes performance of another set im...
A variety of conflicts occur when a role incumbent has to conform simultaneously to a number of expectations which are mutually exclusive, contradictory, or inconsistent, so that the performance of one set of duties makes performance of another set impossible, or at least difficult. As a school principal performs his role in a school organization, he has a variety of reference groups that might have different expectations for the principalship. Although two or more sets of expectations for the same role are not necessarily opposed in any ultimate sense, it is clear that the time and energy devoted to implementing one set takes away time and energy from implementing the other. To this extent they are in conflict.
The purpose of the study was to examine the expectations for the principalship on the parts of a group of teachers and a group of students in secondary schools. The investigator a 46-item questionnaire covering expectations for the principal's behavior in tasks such as staff personnel, curriculum, student discipline, school finance and plant, leadership and community relationships, 500 teachers and 500 students were randomly sampled from secondary schools in the Seoul area from which a response rate of approximately 89% was obtained. The final sample included 442 teachers and 431 students. The respondents were required to indicate the strength of their expeciations on a five-point scale from "strongly disagree"(scale score 1) to "strongly agree"(scale score 5). The mean was computed for each item and then a F test was utilized to determine the significance of the differences between the teacher group and the student group for each of the 46 items. The statistical significance test level was set at .01 and .05 for these analyses.
A comparisons of the responses revealed considerable differences as well as similarities between each reference group. However, expectations for the principalship mostly differed more in degree than they did in opposite directions between two groups.
The major different expectations for the principal's behavior in tasks between the teacher group and the student group were as follows;
A. Staff personnel. The teacher group tended to disagree with the expectation that the principal should encourage teachers to compete with one another, whereas the student group neither disagreed nor agreed with it.
B. Curriculum. While teachers disagreed that the principal visited them in classrooms regularly to give instructional help, students tended to agree with the expectation. The teacher group tended to agree that the principal should prevent teachers from leaving their students to do as they liked in classrooms, whereas the student group seemed to disagree with the item.
C. Student discipline. While the teacher group were inclined to agree that the principal should give a free hand to the teacher to punish his students, the student group seemed to disagree with this disciplinary practice. The student group tended to agree with the expectation that the principal should take actions against problem students in the school, whereas the teacher group tended to disagree with it.
D. School finance and plant. While the teacher group tended to expect that the principal tried harder to get more contributions from parents for the school finance, the student group neither agreed nor disagreed with this expectation.
E. Leadership. Both of the two groups showed quite similar expectations for the principal's leadership behaviors in this task area.
F. Community relationships. Expectations for the principals behavior in this task also differed only in degree between the teacher group and the student group.