Secondary Education Teachers
OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of teachers who are part of the restructuring process inherent in small school initiatives and identify their prevalent shared leadership practices.
METHODOLOGY The target population was teachers participating in the elementary grades small schools (less than 300 students) initiatives in Chicago for the 2000-2001 school year. Thirty of the 50 small schools participated and subsequently 139 teachers returned the Team-Leadership Practices Inventories were returned (22% response rate). They also provided institutional data. Internal reliability coefficients for the Team LPI were between .87 and .91, with an overall scale reliability of .97.
KEY FINDINGS The most frequently engaged leadership practice was Enabling, followed by Modeling, Inspiring, Encouraging, and Challenging. This ordering was similar for small schools (free-standing) and small schools within-a-school. However, teachers associated with schools-within-a-school reported significantly higher levels of engagement with all five leadership practices than their counterparts within small schools.