Greenfield (1991) has noted that effective school leadership requires an administrator to function as a leader in several roles simultaneously. These role include managerial, instruction, political, social, and even moral roles.
Greenfield states that while there are several variables, (e.g. personality traits, situational aspects, organizational policy and practices, and so forth), which influence the degree of effectiveness with which school administrators such as principals and assistant principals function in these roles, one of the most important of these contributing factors is the leader's degree of prior experience with school leadership roles.
One reason why prior leadership experience is so crucial to effective administrative function is its skill-building function. As noted by Hutchison (1988), the degree of one's background in the leadership role is directly related to the acquisition and development of skills critical to effective school leadership. These critical skills are said to include information managing skills, problem-solving and decision making skills, goal setting skills, project management skills, interpersonal communication skills, conflict and motivation management skills, and mentoring skills.
While the cited studies confirm the importance of prior leadership experience for the effective functioning of school administrators such as principals and vice-principals, what is not confirmed is whether the kind of leadership experiences in administrators' backgrounds is of differential contribution to their overall leadership effectiveness. In other words, might a school principal or assistant principal be a better leader if he or she had one kind of previous school leadership experience over another kind?
It is the purpose of this research to determine whether the types of previous leadership experiences held by Assistant Principals are related to their effectiveness in their current administrati...