Assessing Leadership Dispositions: Issues, Challenges, and Promising Practices

Written by Grantley, J., Gattuso, M., Bickford, B., Wexford, T., & Norbury, R. (October 2011). Principal Preparation; Assessment of Standards

Summary

Although researchers have succeeded in identifying knowledge and skills (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, & Fleishman, 2000) and personal traits and characteristics (Stogdill, 1974; Zaccaro, Kemp, & Bader, 2004) of effective leaders, they have not been nearly as successful in identifying or defining those elusive leadership qualities that fall into the affective domain – what the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) (2008) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) (1996; 2008) call “dispositions.” Of course, that professors of educational administration are finding it difficult to either define or assess dispositions (Melton, Mallory, & Green, 2010) has not relieved them of the responsibility for doing so. NCATE requires programs that prepare school leaders to address “dispositions,” as well as “knowledge and skills.” Moreover, it requires that programs employ fair, reliable, and valid methods for doing so.And herein lies the problem. The term “dispositions” poses a complex set of issues, in part due to the complex nature of constructs implied by the term. In this brief paper, the authors discuss the challenges posed by the need to assess leadership dispositions, and they review the current state of professional literature that informs attempts to do so. In addition, they offer two examples of promising practices designed to assist candidates in educational administration programs by providing them valid and reliable feedback on their leadership dispositions.