Mary Persico - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the leadership style of seconda... more The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the leadership style of secondary principals and the professional development practices of their teachers. The population of the study consisted of the Catholic high schools accredited by the Middle States Commission on Secondary Education. One hundred twenty-nine or 50.4% of the 256 eligible schools participated in the study. Two survey instruments were used. The first, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire or MLQ (Bass and Avolio, 1995), was scored by both leaders, the principals, and raters, a random sampling of one third of their professional staff. The 36 selected questions of the MLQ rate the principals as leaders with laissez-faire, transactional, or transformational leadership behaviors. The second instrument, the Models of Staff Development Survey or MSDS, was completed by the teacher respondents only. This survey looks for indications of each of the five models of staff development as proposed by Sparks a...