Author: Ip-Shan Alice Kingman Lo

Publisher: Open Dissertation Press

Published: 2017-01-27

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 9781374719514

This dissertation, "A Gender Study on Leadership: the Female and Male Principals of Hong Kong Secondary Schools as Perceived Byteachers and the Principals Themselves" by Ip-shan, Alice, Kingman Lo, 盧業珊, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled A Gender Study on Leadership: The Female and Male Principals of Hong Kong Secondary Schools as Perceived by Teachers and the Principals Themselves Submitted by Alice Kingman Lo Ip Shan for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in December 1996 Although much has been written on gender and leadership, there is still a lack of consensus as to whether women and men lead in the same or different ways. This study is an exploration of: (i) female and male principals' task/relationship leadership traits and transformational/transactional/laissez-faire leadership styles as perceived by teachers and the principals themselves, and (ii) how four representative principals (two female and two male) were perceived by their teachers and themselves in terms of their leadership behaviours in performing various administrative duties at school. The instrument used for the quantitative part of the study was a three-section survey. A total of 5,044 questionnaires was sent to 194 schools. The major findings of the quantitative study were: (1) female principals were in general perceived by teachers to be significantly more task-oriented than the male principals, but there was no difference of statistical significance in the perception of female and male principals' relationship leadership traits, (2) female principals were perceived by teachers as significantly higher than their male counterparts in the display of all four transformational leadership factors, one transactional leadership factor and significantly lower in the display of the laissez-faire leadership style, (3) female principals were perceived by teachers as significantly more frequent in performing both task-oriented and relationship-oriented responsibilities than male principals do in general, (4) female and male principals ranked themselves very similarly in describing their own task/relationship leadership traits, transformational/transactional/laissez-faire leadership styles and frequency in performing task/relationship-oriented responsibilities, (5) findings were generally convergent with those reported above when principals were also compared by type of school and by the same gender, and (6) teachers tended to rank principals consistently lower in principals' task, relationship, transformational, transactional and higher in laissez-faire leadership behaviours than principals ranked themselves. Data for the qualitative part of the study were gathered by 20 individual interviews. The questions asked in the interviews centered on ten core school administrative duties that included: (i) setting of goals; (ii) seeing to needs of students; (iii) decision-making; (iv) commitment to learning; (v) communication with staff; (vi) motivation; (vii) professional development; (viii) review and evaluation; (ix) conflict management; and (x) crisis management. The interviews were analysed based on the transformational, transactional, laissez-faire, task and relationship leadership behaviours of the four principals. The major findings of the qualitative study were: (1) the descriptions of the leadership behaviours of the four principals by teachers and themselves supported the rankings assigned to the principals in the quantitative section of the study, and (2)