| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between principals’ basic psychological needs and the district-level factors that support them. Evidence from the past thirty years of educational research has pointed to school principals as influential in improving school outcomes. In addition to their traditional managerial roles, principals are now expected, among other things, to develop a shared vision of high achievement, cultivate a strong culture, develop and recruit teaching talent, and most importantly, to improve teaching and learning. Because of this, the principalship has continued to evolve into a role of ever-increasing complexity that has been shown to carry extremely high levels of pressure, stress, and burnout. While there is a growing body of literature on what school districts can do to support principals’ capacity for instructional leadership and school improvement, little attention has been given to understanding what types of support principals report needing from the district office in order to meet their psychological needs. For principals to carry out the challenging and complex work before them, there must be a greater understanding of which district-imposed conditions support their motivation to engage in that work. Using self-determination theory, a survey of 187 elementary and secondary principals across the state of Oklahoma was conducted to determine what principals in the State currently receive from their district offices, the relationship between those supports and principals’ psychological needs, and to identify the supports principals report to value and want from their district offices to better support them in their work. “Principals” was used to refer to both head principals and assistant principals. The study found that goal setting and instructional coherence (ß=.255), support for autonomy (ß=.295), and networking and collaboration opportunities (ß=.186) were supports provided by Oklahoma districts which had a positive correlation with principals’ basic psychological needs and its subscales. It also found that while the majority of school districts offer professional development and mentoring opportunities as supports for their principals, principals themselves place more value on autonomy supports and networking and collaboration opportunities. These results have implications for how districts should go about supporting their principals in their work and also build upon the theoretical and empirical knowledge related to district effectiveness and principal development. | en_US |
