CHANGES IN THE WAYS DECISIONS WERE MADE IN A SCHOOL DISTRICT'S GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING PROGRAM BETWEEN 2000 AND 2009

Abstract

This research was designed to answer: What were changes in the ways decisions were made in a school district's guidance and counseling program between 1999 and 2009? Through a qualitative study, attention was given to emergent concepts and relationships relevant to the phenomenon of collaborative decision making in the distributed leadership framework. With a six-question survey, the researcher conducted face-to-face interviews with participants (counselors and the superintendent) from an urban-suburban school district in the Midwestern part of the United States. Data from these interviews were validated with nontechnical literature, technical literature, and the personal and professional experiences of the researcher. Findings were that leadership structure and leadership personnel for the department coincided with changes in the interactions of participants resulting in changes in the structures, routines and tools used in decision making. Evidence also indicated an increase in collaborative development of tools used to collect and examine data, as well as an increase in the use of data to make decisions in the department in Professional Learning Communities. Taylor Knight's Model of Distributed Leadership depicted the interactions of the guidance and counseling staff and district leadership over the 10-year period studied. The interactions perceived as contributing to the decisions with the most positive impact on the department were characterized as the participants' commitment to execute leadership through: building relationships; asking for and giving input and listening; starting with parameters then being flexible as the situations evolved; and determining who, when and how much to involve others in decisions.