The demands of high-stakes testing, tenure reform, and teacher accountability have dominated the landscape of education for almost two decades. The expectations placed on public schools require leadership that supports and motivates teachers to perform at extremely high levels. Public schools therefore must fill their institutions with principals who possess a leadership style that can inspire and empower teachers to tackle these demands and set a clear vision for the future of their schools. Transformational leadership is a model of leadership that has been shown to elevate and motivate followers to perform beyond organizational expectations. The purpose of this study is to examine the common transformational leadership behaviors and methods of application utilized by public school principals. This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods of research separated into two stages. In the first stage, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire-Self (MLQ) was used to survey 66 public school principals in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The results of the survey were analyzed and used to develop a cohort of 10 principals to participate in the qualitative stage of the study. In this second stage, the cohort of 10 principals participated in face-to-face semi-structured interviews in order for the researcher to further examine their behaviors and methods of application. The data from the MLQ and the interviews revealed that transformational leadership exists in public schools in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The results from this study identified specific behaviors and methods of application that align with the four domains of transformational leadership. This study contributes to the existing research on transformational leadership and also provides current public school principals with information regarding behaviors that can be implemented to enhance their practices. Further research that builds upon the application of transformational leadership and its effect on variables such as school climate, teacher turnover, and student achievement would reveal the influence that transformational leadership has on other aspects of school leadership.
The construction industry in New Jersey has long provided a viable opportunity to young men and women searching for employment as an alternative to continuing education beyond high school. Although New Jersey's county vocational school systems were established and are funded for the purposes of educating and training students in prerequisite skill sets for work force positions, discussions with the administration of today’s county vocational school districts suggests that enrollment in many of the programs developed to prepare students for construction industry or building trades programs has been decreasing. This mixed methods study examined the evolution of building trades education in New Jersey’s county vocational high school system through the perspective of the administrators charged with leading the districts currently offering programming in the same. More specifically, these administrators were asked to identify the variables they believe to have contributed to a perceived decline in enrollment in these courses. The null hypothesis tested as part of this study was that there is no statistically significant relationship among New Jersey county vocational school administrators’ perceptions and the variables that impact enrollment in high school level Building Trades programming. In addition to testing the null hypothesis, role emphasis was placed on answering the following, research questions: 1. What are the variables that have impacted enrolment in Building Trades programming at the high school level? 2. Are there notable differences in beliefs of the respondents based on the population of the county in which the school districts operate? 3. Is there a program structure that is more effective at maintaining consistent enrollment than others, i.e. shared time programming vs. full time programming? 4. Are county vocational school districts moving away from offering prerequisite coursework in traditionally less academic trades and more towards traditionally highly academic trades, i.e. engineering, technology and medicine?