The administration of vocational education as a function of school superintendents in Texas

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine which tasks in the administration of vocational education are considered most important by superintendents involved in their performance. This information could be used as a data base for changes in training programs for superintendents. In order to accomplish this purpose, answers to the following questions were sought: 1. Which tasks are necessary to the administration of vocational education? 2. How closely involved is the superintendent in the performance of these tasks? 3. Are the tasks and their performance different in school districts which differ in their demographic characteristics? 4. Are the tasks and their performance seen as different by superintendents whose professional backgrounds differ? A questionnaire was mailed to a sample of superintendents in districts where there was a vocational program but no vocational director. The information requested included demographic data for the school system, professional data for the superintendent, and responses to a task inventory. Replies were received from 141 superintendents. Frequency distributions were used to determine the answer to the first question. Chi-square tests and Kendall's tau c tests were used to determine the answers to question 2. Analysis of variance and simple and multiple correlations were used to test four hypotheses to determine the answers to questions 3 and 4. All tests were performed at the .05 level of significance..