3.9 Perceptions within the discipline: exceptional scholarship in  (Page 4/8)

While I do not know why for certain why the response rate was low, several possibilities do come to mind. Forone thing, the tensions evident in some of the responses (and non-votes) received suggest that the nature of the topic itself iscontroversial. Asking who the most exceptional scholar in educational leadership is today may seem confounded for those whoquestion the very notion of“greatness,”especially among one’s living contemporaries, or those who can think of more than oneperson, or those who can think of no one at all deserving of such status. As Renzetti and Lee (1993) acknowledge, researchingsensitive topics poses conceptual, methodological, and imaginative challenges, an explanation that describes my own experience.

As another possibility, there is little control that can be exerted over a study that is conductedelectronically and where the recipients, although from a targeted population, may question the survey focus or the researcher’s motives. This is why I spent additional time collecting the data,re-stating the purpose of the study, eliciting some responses in-person, and emailing reminders to non-respondents, all asstrategies for seeking a higher response rate.

Specifically, the survey was electronically circulated to the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Division A (Administration), which had 820 members in 2002,and AERA’s Division K (Teaching&Teacher Education), which had 1,004 (http://www.aera.net). Additionally, representatives ofUCEA’s executive council and member institutes were recipients (http://www.ucea.org), along with NCPEA’s 1,622 members (http://www.ncpea.org). Thirty-five leadership professors alsorepresented the Florida Association of Professors of Educational Leadership Association (FAPEL).

Deviation from Kiewra–Creswell study. Unlike Kiewra and Creswell (2000), who generated a list of names based onAERA’s Division C (Learning and Instruction) membership, I did not preselect scholars to be rated. I strove to avoid tying the resultsto particular associations and their“star”leaders, which could have limited and even biased the data. And I did not want topresume what“living scholar”might mean to others, so I avoided defining this term. Those respondents who forwarded the names oftwo exceptional scholars, explaining their reasoning for this decision, had both votes counted. Also, in contrast with Kiewra andCreswell’s focus on cognition and learning for their survey and recipient pool, my own form provided no premapping orcompartmentalization relative to educational leadership. Reasons for selecting any particular area, such as supervision or policy,seemed arbitrary, serving only to privilege one at the expense of another. I opted for openness, hoping this would promote greaterinclusion or representation of the educational leadership field andhence provide a rich data set of interest to readers.

Finally, the Kiewra and Creswell results were based on 41 (out of 113) responses. The 233 I received fromnominators also compares with the 105 that Murphy (1999) collected.