A Quantitative Study of P-12 Public, Rural Principals' Self-efficacy with Florida's Principal Leadership Standards

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine what variables increase self-efficacy for public, rural P-12 principals in Florida’s principal leadership standards. The study’s intent was to also determine what sources principals acknowledged as their source of self-efficacy in each standard. For the context of this study, sources of self-efficacy were operationalized and ranked by respondents. Self-efficacy in each standard was determined by a continuous rating 0-10 in each of the skills established by the Florida Department of Education as comprising each of the nine standards evaluated in this study. The data was analyzed using non-parametric measures because of the skewness of the data as determined by the Kolmogorow-Smirnov test. Pearson’s, Mann-Whitney U, and Kruskal-Wallis were used to determine relationships of the variables studied with principals’ self-efficacy in each standard. The number of years a principal has served in that capacity had the greatest significance with having weak, positive correlations in four of the nine standards. Females had higher rates of self-efficacy in two of the nine standards, and race, ethnicity, school and school site had no relationship with self-efficacy in the nine standards. As a principal’s age increased, so too did self-efficacy in two standards. Years of teaching and years as an assistant principal had no relationship with a principal’s self-efficacy in the standards. The greatest source of self-efficacy, ranking number one, was performance outcomes, while verbal feedback was the second, and vicarious experiences ranked as third.