Abstract
Current changes in student demographics coupled with a fast growing global marketplace have the school superintendent or director dealing with greater diversity of cultures and languages among students and staff. The purpose of this study was to determine the leadership orientations, as described by Bolman and Deal (1997) and self-reported by school directors of overseas American curriculum schools located geographically in the Mediterranean region of Europe, and members of the Mediterranean Association of International Schools (MAIS), a professional educators organization. In addition, the study compared the similarities and differences of leadership orientations identified by the MAIS school directors, with those results reported by Faverty (1997) in his study of small school district superintendents in California. This study further described the demographic characteristics of (1) gender, (2) age, (3) ethnicity, (4) career experience, (5) career-path sequence, and (6) family composition of the MAIS overseas school directors. Finally, the study compared the demographic variables of gender, age, and career experience of the MAIS overseas school directors with those of the California small school district superintendents. The study used descriptive and ex post facto research methodologies to report the findings. The leadership orientation data were gathered using a survey designed by Bolman and Deal (see appendix E) and a questionnaire designed by this researcher to gather the demographic variables. The sixteen MAIS overseas directors were selected from a geographic area similar to California, and compared with the fifty-seven California school superintendents with schools of less than two thousand students from Faverty's study (1997). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics of a two-tailed t-test of differences, the Aspen-Welch Test, and the Tukey-Kramer Test. The research found a significant difference for the structural leadership orientations of both female overseas school leaders and California superintendents. Both directors and superintendents had high scores in human resource leadership orientation. Demographic characteristics of the overseas school director included: male, forty-to-forty-nine years of age, Caucasian, and a school director for less than five years.