School principals’ effectiveness in north Lebanon public sector

Abstract EN

School principals are the key to the schools’, teachers’ and students’ success.

Hence, many aspects of their work have been the target of research in many parts of the world.

However, in Lebanon, this research is scarce.

An important question that needs investigation in the Lebanese context is: how do teachers evaluate the roles of their principals? This study investigated the views of 447 experienced teachers regarding the effectiveness of their 70 school principals in North Lebanon.

The school principals were evaluated by the participating teachers through Audit of Principal’s Effectiveness (APE) survey, developed by Dr.

Jerry Valentine & Bowman (1984).

The participants responded to the APE of 80 statements classified into three leadership domains: organizational development, organizational environment, and educational program.

They rated their principals on a 3 point scale (1= not effective, 2= moderately effective, 3= very effective).

The SPSS results indicated that North Lebanon principals were viewed by the participants as moderately effective in the organizational development and very effective in the organizational environment domains, but not effective at all in the domain of the educational program