Download or read book Assessing Principals' Leadership in Implementing Educational Technology Policies written by I-Hua Chang and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Purpose of the study . The purpose of this study is to identify, through the perceptions of teachers, the domains of effective technology leadership demonstrated by public school principals. This study addresses two salient issues: first, what are the domains of effective technology leadership perceived to be, and second, whether the domains perceived to be important to effectiveness are common across individuals, such as teachers. The intent of this study is to develop a single level assessment of technology leadership focusing on K-12 principals. Therefore, a single level analytical method, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), is used to examine the data. Procedures . This study included three high schools, three junior high schools, three middle schools and eighteen elementary schools in a mid-size public school district. Teachers were asked to measure the dimensions of technology leadership that are related to their principal's role in facilitating technology use in their schools. The validity of the measurement model of technology leadership and the final structural equation model were tested through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and examined with Mplus version 2.02 using a maximum likelihood fitting function. Findings . The results suggested that the observed data and the proposed model fit these data quite well. The domains (except for the domain of integrating technology leadership into curriculum and learning) defined effective technology leadership well. In other words, vision, planning and management; in-service training; interpersonal and communication skills; ethical and legal issues; technological support and infrastructure; and evaluation, research, and assessment are the six domains of behaviors that explain the effective technology leadership of principals. The results also showed that the demographic variables (predictors) such as gender and years worked with the principal were not significant in explaining teachers' perceptions of the principal's effective technology leadership. Female teachers perceived their principals as less effective technology leaders than did male teachers. Those who worked more than five years with the principal perceived their principals as more effective technology leaders. However, being a tenured teacher had a negative and significant impact on teachers' perceptions of the principal's effective technology leadership. Tenured faculty members perceived their principals as less effective. Moreover, teaching subject (i.e., elementary subject) had a negative and significant impact on teachers' perceptions of the principal's effective technology leadership. Those who teach elementary subjects also perceived their principals as less effective. Ninety-three percent of the variance in effective technology leadership remains unexplained by the predictor variables. Only seven percent of the variance is explained by demographic variables. This may suggest that other types of demographic variables not used in this study may explain variation in the teachers' perceptions of principals' effective technology leadership. Demographics of the ecology or situational demographics for example may be important.