Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Vocational Education (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this study was to describe and explain vocational high school teachers' self-perceived attitudes toward school change in Korea. The study was also designed to investigate school principals' Change Facilitator Styles (CFS: Initiator, Manager, and Responder) as perceived by their teachers. Further, the relationship between the teachers' attitudes and their principals' perceived CFS, and other factors were utilized to explain the teachers' attitudes toward school change. Ex post facto research study was designed. The population studied consisted of Korean full-time vocational high school teachers (N=2,188) employed by the Daejeon and Chungnam Offices of Education during the 2003-2004 academic year. Two hundred and twenty-seven teachers were randomly selected from the 40 schools. Data were collected through a mailed questionnaire, which consisted of three parts: the inventory of attitudes toward school change developed by Dunham et al. (1989); the CFSQ developed by Hall and George (1999); and a questionnaire for demographic variables. One support staff member in each school played an important role in gathering data, resulting in a usable response rate of 99%. Overall, the teachers had positive attitudes toward school change in general, but they showed a relatively low level of willingness to take action in pursuing school change. Academic teachers in the schools had more favorable attitudes toward school change than their vocational counterparts. Strikingly, of the 40 principals, not a single principal was perceived by teachers to be an Initiator. The majority of principals (29, 73%) were determined as Responders, and the remainder (11, 28%) were Managers. This study failed to reveal that principals' CFS (the main independent variable) was a meaningful factor for predicting teachers' attitudes toward school changes (the dependent variable). Two points might plausibly contribute to these findings. An average of 2.5 years as a principal with an average of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Larry Miller (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Vocational