2018 Volume 66 Issue 1 Pages 67-80
The purpose of the present study was to explore factors that may affect teachers' level of aspiration to become school administrators. In the first of 2 preliminary studies, 5 candidate teachers for positions as school administrators participated in a semi-structured interview that provided information about factors such as their past work experience, their sense of self-efficacy in teaching, how they perceived or valued their work as public education personnel, and their level of acknowledgement and perspective about becoming a school administrator in the future. In the second preliminary study, 68 teachers who also were candidates for positions as school principals completed questionnaires in which they described characteristics of their role model for school principal and gave a more in-depth description of how they perceived the work of public education personnel. From the data of these 2 preliminary studies, a scale for measuring the level of aspiration to become a school administrator and a scale to measure related factors were developed. In the main study, 310 elementary and junior high school teachers participated in a survey conducted on-line. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis of the data suggested that the presence of an innovative and professional leader as role model and a sense of accomplishment achieved through experience in school management increased the teachers' willingness to contribute to school management and built a positive attitude toward school principals, thereby indirectly increasing their aspiration to become school administrators.
