Leadership in School Psychology

Abstract

School psychologists are expected to be leaders, yet there is not a domain-specific model of leadership to guide training and practice. Effective school psychologists must have the ability to adjust their leadership style to the environment. This study aims to identify the characteristics school psychologists perceive as important to be effective leaders. The study’s focus is to collect information from school psychologists about their perceptions of leadership characteristics to determine if importance of characteristics differ dependent the situation. This study will present school psychologists with common ethical and neutral situations. Participants will be asked to rate which characteristics they perceive to be the most important to utilize within each scenario. The domains are assessments/evaluations, interventions (behavioral, crisis, academic), mental health issues, and consultation. The characteristics rated were adapted from Shriberg’s (2010) survey: team skills, knowledge/expertise, personal character, interpersonal skills, and competence. It is predicted that competence will be rated as most important characteristic overall regardless of the situation and knowledge/expertise is rated highest in ethical situations. Analyses showed that knowledge/expertise was rated as the most important characteristic in the domains of Academic Interventions, Assessment/Evaluation, and Behavioral Interventions and Neutral scenarios. Interpersonal Skills were rated as most important in Consultation, Mental Health Issues, and in Ethical scenarios. Competence was rated as most important in Crisis Interventions and personal character was rated as the least important overall.