A comparison of principal mentoring experiences by race, gender, and ethnicity
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Abstract
School principals are responsible for ensuring the academic and social-emotional success of students with diverse cultural backgrounds. Principals manage faculty and staff, school operations, reduced budgets, and a growing list of daily tasks. They do so with too little preparation, limited professional development, a lack of support, and the weight of accountability. The strain causes many to leave the profession within the first few years on the job. Retention is particularly difficult for leaders of color, since a lack of racial and ethnic diversity presents unique challenges that are often overlooked.
Still, school improvement remains a priority for communities that rely on public schools for a high-quality and equitable education for their citizens. Rather than replacing an ineffective principal, mentoring offers the ongoing and job-embedded professional development needed to energize school reform. Though over 30 American states agree that principal mentoring is beneficial, they don’t use a standard set of components in their programs. Literature shows mentor matching is a key element to success. Factors like experience working with similar populations, facing common barriers, and availability are considerations for the matching process.
Architects of effective mentoring programs realize approaches to leadership development vary considering diverse school populations. This study compared principal mentoring experiences by race, gender, and ethnicity. It also considered the leadership styles that are most appropriate for 21st-century school leaders and how perceptions differ based on demographic characteristics of race, gender, and ethnicity.
The quantitative survey helped to explain the mentor matching process, mentoring perceptions, and development in instructional leadership, transformational leadership, culturally responsive school leadership, and general leadership responsibilities. Across all groups, the most prevalent factor for matching mentor and mentee was based on the mentor’s availability. In addition to availability, women and Hispanic leaders were matched most often by proximity, and Black leaders were matched based on school economic status.
Principals’ mean perception scores were compared by groups defined by race, gender, and ethnicity. Scores for White respondents were higher than Black respondents, but the difference was not statistically significant. Results revealed gender as a significant factor in mean perception scores for the questions associated with transformational leadership and general principal responsibilities. Ethnicity was a factor in perception scores for the questions connected to culturally responsive school leadership. It is noted that the small number of Hispanic participants was a limitation for the ethnicity comparisons. Future research is suggested to test the intersectionality of mentor pairings on perception scores and to compare results with a larger sample of Hispanic and Black school leaders.
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Introduction -- Literature review -- Methodology -- Results -- Discussion and conclusion
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Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)