Term of Award

Summer 2004

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Educational Administration

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Department

Department of Leadership, Technology, and Human Development

Committee Chair

Michael D. Richardson

Committee Member 1

Bryan W. Griffin

Committee Member 2

Gregory Chamblee

Committee Member 3

James Burnham

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships between the technological innovations within schools and the characteristics of school principals. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence that the principal has on the utilization of technology within a school and how this was related to their attitudes and innovativeness. The primary focus of the study was to determine if the principals' degree of innovativeness has a relationship to the technology use in the school. The study looked at the principals' sex, age, size of their school, and the type of system (rural, suburban, or urban), principals' attitude toward technology, principals' degree of innovativeness and if any of these characteristics had any effect on the technology access or technology use in their schools. Principals are assigned the task of being instructional leaders of their schools; it is their responsibility to take an active lead in the type of educational technology purchased and how it was utilized (Benson, Peltier, and Matranga, 1999).

Out of the approximately 1254 elementary schools in Georgia, 330 of these schools were selected by placing all elementary school in an alphabetized list and picking every fourth school. Using this procedure, the researcher was able to obtain data from 146 schools that was usable and resulted in a return rate of forty-four percent. The data was analyzed using frequency charts to report the principals' demographics, and the principals' degree of innovativeness, the principals' attitude towards educational technology, the availability of educational technology, and its use within the school. Pearson's Correlations and Analyses of Covariance (ANCOVA) were used to determine the relationship between the collected data.

It was hypothesized that, as has been found in previous studies, an increase in computer utilization by the teachers within the school may be fostered by a principal with a high degree of innovation and a positive computer attitude. However, there was no data found to support this conclusion.

Copyright

To obtain a full copy of this work, please visit the campus of Georgia Southern University or request a copy via your institution's Interlibrary Loan (ILL) department. Authors and copyright holders, learn how you can make your work openly accessible online.

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