Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Innovative School: Some Organizational Characteristics

The Innovative School: Some Organizational Characteristics The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between school innovativeness-the tendency of a school to adopt innovations before other schools—and organizational climate-often referred to as school “tone”, “feel”, “atmosphere” or “climate”. Innovativeness in schools was measured by a combination of (i) initial rating by the Director of Primary Education; (ii) rating by a panel of headmasters and inspectors; (iii) completion of an “adoption scale” by participating headmasters indicating what innovations had been adopted (and when) in their schools during their respective terms of office; (iv) completion of a “change behaviour” instrument by teachers and (v) the completion of an adjectival check list by teachers.Preliminary analysis of these data enabled a clear demarcation to be made between nine more innovative schools and ten less innovative schools. Organizational climate was measured by the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire (OCDQ). This instrument measures four dimensions of climate: Supportiveness, Operations Emphasis, Intimacy and Disaffiliation. Analysis of data revealed that (1) principal supportiveness in the more innovative schools was significantly greater than that in the less innovative schools; (i) principal operations emphasis in the more innovative schools was significantly lower than that in the less innovative schools; (iii) teacher intimacy in the more innovative schools was significantly higher than that in the less innovative schools and (iv) teacher disaffiliation did not differ significantly between the two groups of schools. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian Journal of Education SAGE

The Innovative School: Some Organizational Characteristics

Thomas, A. Ross
Australian Journal of Education , Volume 17 (2): 18 – Aug 1, 1973
Download PDF
18 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/sage/the-innovative-school-some-organizational-characteristics-44pBymwoKD

References (4)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
© 1973 Australian Council for Educational Research
ISSN
0004-9441
eISSN
2050-5884
DOI
10.1177/000494417301700201
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between school innovativeness-the tendency of a school to adopt innovations before other schools—and organizational climate-often referred to as school “tone”, “feel”, “atmosphere” or “climate”. Innovativeness in schools was measured by a combination of (i) initial rating by the Director of Primary Education; (ii) rating by a panel of headmasters and inspectors; (iii) completion of an “adoption scale” by participating headmasters indicating what innovations had been adopted (and when) in their schools during their respective terms of office; (iv) completion of a “change behaviour” instrument by teachers and (v) the completion of an adjectival check list by teachers.Preliminary analysis of these data enabled a clear demarcation to be made between nine more innovative schools and ten less innovative schools. Organizational climate was measured by the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire (OCDQ). This instrument measures four dimensions of climate: Supportiveness, Operations Emphasis, Intimacy and Disaffiliation. Analysis of data revealed that (1) principal supportiveness in the more innovative schools was significantly greater than that in the less innovative schools; (i) principal operations emphasis in the more innovative schools was significantly lower than that in the less innovative schools; (iii) teacher intimacy in the more innovative schools was significantly higher than that in the less innovative schools and (iv) teacher disaffiliation did not differ significantly between the two groups of schools.

Journal

Australian Journal of Education – SAGE

Published: Aug 1, 1973

There are no references for this article.