A correlative study of competencies involving school superintendents /

Abstract

The study warranted the following conclusions: (1) The rural superintendent uses competencies that require a high level of personal involvement. Furthermore, effective rural superintendents must call upon a wide range of general competencies if they expect to perform effectively. (2) The urban superintendents delegate responsibilities to others. The competencies they rely on most heavily relate to problem analysis, planning, and delegating tasks among subordinates. (3) The competencies on which superintendents in vocational districts place heavier emphasis than their counterparts in public school systems involve public relations and other externally oriented activities. They must have or develop competence in recruiting and working with external resource people to be used as advisory, planning, or evaluating committees. (4) In contrast to what some might expect, the majority of the superintendents in this sample did not identify the use of computers in administration as an important competency for the superintendency. (5) There was relatively strong consensus among superintendents on the fundamental competencies needed for successful superintending. The differences among them were primarily in degrees of emphasis.

The study did not support the contentions of some that educational administration preparation programs or certification requirements for superintendents should be tailored to specific types or sizes of superintendencies.

This study investigated the degree to which competencies associated with the effective performance of the superintendent's role are common to the rural, urban, and vocational district superintendencies in Oklahoma. The instrument used had been tested and found to be valid and reliable in other studies and included a task inventory of 138 competencies. The sample of Oklahoma superintendents included all of those identified in the study as urban, all of the vocational district superintendents, and a random sample of those identified as rural. The correlation among the various sets of rankings was determined through application of the Kendall's coefficient of concordance, W.