Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the leadership orientations of secondary principals who have completed the California School Leadership Academy (CSLA) and to determine if there was a significant difference between the leadership orientations of these principals and principals who have not been so trained. The study also examined the effect of seven moderator variables on the leadership orientations of the two groups. A particular focus of the study was the effect of CSLA training on the symbolic leadership orientation of principals. A parallel study (Meade, 1992), using the same design and instrumention studied the leadership orientations of elementary principals. The research was both descriptive and ex post facto. Descriptive statistics (means and percentages) were used to describe the various sub groups in the two populations studied. Inferential statistics (two tailed t-tests, Chi-Square test of independent samples, and one way analysis of variance) were used to test differences within and among the two groups. The sample consisted of 243 CSLA trained secondary school principals and 322 randomly selected secondary school principals, who were not CSLA graduates. 123 CSLA trained principals and 165 non CSLA principals responded to a questionnaire (Bolman and Deal) measuring leadership orientations as well as a questionnaire that collected data on the seven moderator variables. The results show that California secondary principals are remarkably similar. They have the same demographic characteristics and career path sequence. There were no significant differences found in leadership orientations between the two groups. Age was found to have an effect on the strength of the Human Resource and Symbolic leadership orientations. Coaching was found to have an effect on the strength of two of the orientations of the CSLA trained principals. This study supports other research which indicates that leadership training has little effect on leadership orientation or style, when the training does not emphasize changing specific behaviors or cognitive re-organization.