Leadership and Adoption of Instructional Technology in Schools

This applied dissertation was designed to investigate the characteristics most represented in two school districts, an inner-city and a suburban district. These characteristics were related to the innovativeness of the school district and the perception of individual leadership in schools that have passed the performance criteria for state accreditation. Forty schools and 200 principals were randomly selected to participate in the study for a period of 3 to 4 months.

The researcher used three instruments to determine whether differences existed between the two districts in regard to performance on the Standards of Learning assessments. He developed a checklist for interview questions on instructional technology strategies that might be implemented by leaders and teachers in the classroom. A Perceived Organizational Innovativeness Scale was used to measure the innovativeness of the school district, and an Individual Innovativeness Scale was used to measure the perception of individual leaders concerning the innovativeness of the school district.

The findings indicated that organization innovativeness contributed to the innovativeness of individuals, such as leaders. Leaders categorized by innovativeness contributed to the overall structure of the organization by means of social networks with predictable human behavior in the organization. The passing of the Standards of Learning assessment and the schools' proven performance and accreditation status were clearly related to the behavioral patterns of individual and the social networks implemented by the leadership.