Self-Assessed Leadership Practices of Administrators and Teachers of the Church Educational System of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

OBJECTIVE
To compare the leadership practices of administrators and teachers of the Church Educational System (CES) of the Latter-Day Saints and to investigate the congruence between those assessments and the constructs of the CES Leadership Model.

METHODOLOGY
There were 243 CES administrators (81% response rate) and 221 CES teachers (74% response rate) who comprised the sample in this study from a random solicitation of the population of all full-time CES administrators and teachers (N=7201) located in 24 areas throughout the 50 U.S. states. The typical administrator (99%) and teacher (79%) was a male. About 24% were between the ages of 31-40 years, 28% between 41-50 and 33 percent between 51-60. Most administrators (46%) and teachers (37%) had over 20 years of work experience. All respondents completed the LPI-Self.

KEY FINDINGS
Responses from CES administrators and teachers were significantly different on all five leadership practices using MANOVA. Post hoc analyses showed many differences between release-time seminary teachers and their counterparts. Some differences were also noted between the latter and early morning teachers. Enabling was rated as most frequently engaged in, followed by Encouraging, Modeling, Inspiring and Challenging. In general, scores from this sample were consistently higher than those from the LPI normative sample base.

The factor analysis supported the five leadership practices conceptualized by Kouzes and Posner and accounted for 57.4% of the variance. This finding supports the author’s contention that the leadership model for CES administrators and teachers is not dissimilar to those applied in other (different) settings. He concludes that the selfassessed leadership practices of CES administrators and teachers are parallel with the CES leadership model.