0.2 Litchka, p. (october 2011). a vision of excellence: exemplary  (Page 3/5)

1. Challenge the Process;
2. Inspire a Shared Vision;
3. Enable Others to Act;
4. Model the Way;
5. Encourage the Heart.

Methodology

Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect the data for this study. For the quantitative portion, the Leadership Practices Inventory ( LPI , Kouzes&Posner, 2001) was used. This instrument has been used in more than 100 educational leadership research studies (Kouzes&Posner, 2009), and psychometric properties have been confirmed (Carless, 2002).

The survey consisted of 30 items, with each of the five leadership practices having six statements. Principals were asked to respond to each of 30 items beginning with, as principal how often do you use the following leadership practice? Teachers were asked, how often does the principal of your school use the following leadership practice? A ten-point Likert scale provided the participants the opportunity to indicate the degree to which they perceived the principal’s use of the practice, with a range of (1) Almost Never to (10) Almost Always . Since each leadership practice had six items on the survey, with a scale of 1-10, the highest point total for a practice was 60. Means for each of the six practices among the principals and then among the teachers were determined for comparison purposes (Kouzes&Posner, 2001).

The qualitative portion of the study involved face-to-face interviews, both individually and in focus groups. Each principal was interviewed individually, while teachers were interviewed individually or in small groups. All teachers were invited to participate in either the interview or focus group. The questions used were based upon each of the identified exemplary leadership practices and corresponding commitments (2001). The researchers used open-ended questions during the interviews and focus groups (Fraenkel&Wallen, 2009), and to allow for flexibility during the conversations, a semi-structured format was used as well (Patton, 2008). More than thirty hours of interviews were collected and analyzed by the primary researcher and a several colleagues, using both open coding and triangulation (Merriam, 2009).

Research sample

Purposive sampling (Fraenkel&Wallen, 2009) was used to select the schools for this study. The location of the study was a large urban school district in the Mid-Atlantic region, having approximately 200 schools and more than 85,000 students. Schools selected for the study met the following criteria:

1. Located within the geographic boundaries of a single urban school district;
2. Higher than average levels of student poverty than found in the district, measured by student participation in the Free and Reduced Lunch Program;
3. Similar student ethnic demographics as found within the school district;
4. Higher levels high levels of student achievement over a five year period, as compared to other schools within the district;

Six schools were identified as meeting the criteria. The researcher contacted each of the six principals to request participation in this study. Three of the principals agreed, two declined and one never responded. As shown in Table 1, the three schools selected were Barton Elementary Middle School, LaSalle Academy, an independent school for boys, and Pershing Charter School, a public charter school.